The Christians as the Romans Saw Them: Second Edition 9780300160956

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THE CHRISTIANS AS THE ROMANS SAW THEM

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THE CHRISTIANS AS THE ROMANS SAW THEM SECOND EDITION

ROBERT LOUIS WILKEN

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

First published by Yale University Press in 1984. Copyright © 2003 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the , publishers.; For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office [email protected]/Office [email protected] Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Control Number: 2002113908 ISBN 978-0-300-09839-6 (pbk.) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5

To Don and Mary-— And to summers on Schoodic Lake

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CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xiii

INTRODUCTION

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

xxiii

I PLINY: A ROMAN GENTLEMAN THE MAKING OF A ROMAN OFFICIAL

2

TRAVELS OF A PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR

8

A CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

15

OFFERINGS OF WINE AND INCENSE

2525

II. CHRISTIANITY AS A BURIAL SOCIETY

31

CHURCH OR POLITICAL CLUB?

32

A SENSE OF BELONGING

.

35

A BACCHIC SOCIETY

41

AN OBSCURE AND SECRET ASSOCIATION

44

III THE PIETY OF THE PERSECUTORS

48

ROMAN RELIGION AND CHRISTIAN PREJUDICE

50

THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION

54

"WE TOO ARE A RELIGIOUS PEOPLE"

62

IV GALEN: THE CURIOSITY OF A PHILOSOPHER

68

PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE

69

CHRISTIANITY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL THE PRACTICE OF PHILOSOPHY

:

THE ARBITRARY GOD OF CHRISTIANS

vii

72 ·

77 83

viii

V CELSUS: A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL BEGGING PRIESTS OF CYBELE AND SOOTHSAYERS

CONTENTS

*

94 95

THE DEFICIENCIES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

101

DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE STORY OF JESUS

IO8

AN APOSTASY FROM JUDAISM

112

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER

117

VI PORPHYRY: THE MOST LEARNED CRITIC OF ALL IN DEFENSE OF PLATO

126 128

THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES

137

THE CHRISTIAN NEW TESTAMENT

144

PHILOSOPHY FROM ORACLES

148

THE RELIGION OF THE EMPEROR

156

JESUS NOT A MAGICIAN

159

AN UNREASONING FAITH

I6O

VII JULIAN THE APOSTATE: JEWISH LAW AND CHRISTIAN TRUTH THE EMPEROR'S PIETY GREEK EDUCATION AND CHRISTIAN VALUES AGAINST THE GALILAEANS THE TRIBAL GOD OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS AN APOSTASY FROM JUDAISM

164 166 171 176 179 184

EPILOGUE SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

197 2O7

INDEX

211

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

At an international conference a few years ago I met the Japanese translator of The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. He told me that the book had done quite well in Japan, and I asked him why he thought that was so. Without hesitation he answered, "It has given Japanese intellectuals new arguments against Christianity." It was a rueful and disquieting response, but, as every author learns, what readers discover in a book is seldom what one anticipated and sometimes not what one desired. I had an equally illuminating experience when the German translation was published. On the original book jacket there is a scene of sacrifice from first-century Rome. On the left stands a woman, perhaps a priestess, in the center a three-legged receptacle for cultic objects; next to that is an incense stand, and on the right is a man making an offering, behind whom is a young server. I had seen the relief in the Glyptothek in Munich when I began to work on the book and proposed it for the book jacket because it gave a positive depiction of religious devotion among the Romans. One of the aims of the book was to overcome the stereotype of Roman society as irreligious and immoral. But when I received the German translation I was chagrined to find that the publisher had concocted a picture of a Roman soldier about to thrust his spear into a group of Christian women and children cowering before the cruel and merciless might of Rome. So much for highminded intentions. ix

X

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The idea behind the book was to, tell::the story of the emergence of Christianity in the Roman world from the perspective of Roman and Greek observers. In 1948 the French scholar Pierre Labriolle had written a book on pagan criticism of Christianity entitled "The pagan reaction,", but his work had never been translated and it moved back and forth between the pagan and Christian perspectives. My goal was to think my way into the world of the critics and to present their views on Christianity with as much sympathy and understanding as I could muster. Since the publication of The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, the most ambitious effort to see the world of Roman religion at the time of the rise of Christianity is Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and'Christians (1987). Lane Fox wished to set the new Christian movement side by side with civic and religious life in the; urban centers of the Mediterranean world. With extraordinary detail, drawing extensively on inscriptions as well as literary works, he demonstrated the durability of awe and intimacy in traditional religious piety. The second and third centuries were not an "age of anxiety," as one scholar called them, but a time when the gods were still present, "standing beside their clients in dreams and guiding them with words or signs of their will." Lane Fox's focus was not .on religious ideas, but local shrines and temples, festivals and sacrifices, votive offerings and oracles, all of which were sources of civic pride. In later Western society, under the influence of Christianity and Judaism, ^genuine religious devotion, pr religious faith, as we are accustomed to put it, has meant an interior transformation of the mind and heart, what Alfred Darby Nock, a student of ancient religion, called a religion of "conversión." But the piety of the Romans was civic and communal and public. Lane Fox showed that people were comfortable and conversant with the traditional practices. Their religion exhibited no fatal flaw that awaited the correction of the Christian movement. By-focusing on religious institutions and practices, Lane Fox filled out the world in which the critics of Christianity lived and made it easier to.understand what thinkers like Celsus and Porphyry were defending and why they were critical of the new way of the Christians. But the point that now strikes me as significant is his argument that the

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

.

·

xi

success of Christianity was not due to the deficiencies of the traditional religion. His book was directed against interpretations, that emphasize continuity between Christianity and classical· culture, particularly in the intellectual class. Christianity, however, brought something new that fit uncomfortably into the settled assumptions of ancient society: "The Christian ideals had a different motivation and a different core," When I wrote The Christians tus the Romans Saw Them it was not my intention to offer theories about why Christianity succeeded and traditional religion declined. My goal was more modest. I was interested chiefly in depicting the religious world in which.the Christian movement took root and showing how it shaped perceptions of the new movement within society. I wanted to bring the cultural and religious world of the Roman Empire into closer conjunction with that of the emerging Christian movement. Christianity became the kind of religion it did; at least in part, because of critics like Celsus, Porphyry, and Julián. Christians encountered the traditions of the ancient world not simply as a literary legacy from the past, but through vital interaction and vigorous criticism of Greek and Roman intellectuals. They helped Christians clarify what they believed, and without them Christianity would have been intellectually poorer. The physician and philosopher Galen was the first to grasp that Christian statements about God required a new view of creation—-what came to be known as creation out of nothing. When one observes that Christian thinkers shared many things with their critics, it is tempting to say that Hellenism laid out the agenda for Christian thought. For example, Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the latter half of the fourth century, used Cicero's treatise on ethics, On Duties^ as the model for his work on the moral life and even gave it the same title. In it he appropriated the classicaLcardinal virtues, prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, as-the basis for his presentation of Christian ethics. Augustine found his way to a spiritual understanding of God by reading the books of the Neoplatonists. Nevertheless, as I have read more' deeply in the ancient .sources and particularly in the Christian sources I am more; impressed at how different Christianity was from the world into which it was born. It was cen-

xii

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

tered on a living person, and it took form in a new kind of community independent of the state. Bishops were not functionaries of the cities, and political authorities had no say in their election. The Bible gave Christians a new vocabulary to speak about God, human beings, the world, and history. I had originally undertaken the study of the critics of Christianity in the Roman world as preparatory to a larger work on the early Christian apologists, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and others who wrote treatises to defend and explain the new movement to outsiders. But on point after point Christian thinking breaks with the categories and conventions of GrecoRoman ways of thinking. Its imaginative horizon is formed and nurtured from within Christian tradition. Though they worked within patterns of thought rooted in ancient culture, Christian thinkers transformed them so profoundly that in the end something quite new came into being. The book on early Christian apologetics was never written. Instead I found myself drawn more deeply into the inner world of Christianity. Only now as I write a new preface to The Christians as the Romans Saw Them am I publishing a new book that takes up the Christian side of things. It is a different work, however, from the one envisioned years ago. Entitled The Spirit of Early Christian Thought^ its agenda is set less by questions posed by Greek and Roman critics than by the Bible, Christian worship, and the person of Christ. Yet I still think that my initial instincts were sound. The place to begin the study of early Christian thought is with the critics. From the beginning they had an uncanny sense of what set Christianity apart from the religion and philosophy of the ancient world. This is a tribute to their seriousness and intelligence. They made it their business to study the Christian Scriptures, to read the writings of Christian thinkers, and to understand the new religion. No doubt that is why they make such fascinating reading today They speak about something we can recognize. The debate between Christians and their critics was thoughtful and informed, and it dealt with the most profound matters of the human spirit. Many of the arguments, on both sides of the divide, are as relevant today as they were when first set forth almost two thousand years ago.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of friends and colleagues read all-or'part of the manuscript and provided helpful comments and criticisms. I wisli in particular to thank Philip pevenish, Robert M. Grant, Dennis Groh, Stanley and Ann Hauerwas, Charles Kannengiesser, Richard j. Neuhaus, and Harold Remus, I am also grateful to Charles Grench of Yale University Press for his interest in the book, to Barbara Folsoni for her careful editing of the manuscript, and to David Hunter forpreparing the index.

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INTRODUCTION

How did Christianity appear to the men and women of the Roman Empire? How did it look to the outsider before it became the established religion of western Europe and Byzantium? The story of early Christian history has been told almost wholly on the basis of Christian sources. The Gospels of the New Testament, the letters of the apostle Paul, the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen—these and similar works, mostof which have been studied for centuries, have provided us with our primary body of information about early Christianity. In recent years new documents such as the Gnostic manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt have expanded the collection of sources. These works, written by Christians who were not part of the "mainstream," have given us new insight into the history and character of the early Christian movement. But even the Gnostic writings, though declared deviant and heretical by the leaders of what might be called the "great church," were still produced by Christians. There is, however, another body of material that does not come from Christians. I am speaking of the observations of pagan observers of Christianity (Roman and Greek writers) which, either in offhand comments in works dealing with other topics, or in frontal attacks on Christianity, provide us with a unique perspective on the emerging church. Though most of this material is familiar to scholars and specialists in the field, it is seldom made available to the wider public, and even when it does find its way into books on the early Christian XV

xvi

INTRODUCTION

movement, it does not play a major role in shaping our view of Christianity,1 The observations of pagans are particularly valuable in the earliest period in Christian history because those who commented on the new movement had little prior knowledge on which to base their views. The first mention of the Christian movement by a Roman writer, Pliny, governor in the province of Bithynia (modern,Turkey), was at the beginning of the second century. He called Christianity a "superstition.*3 Later in the century Celsus, a Greek philosopher, wrote that Jesus was a magician and sorcerer. Do statements such as these reflect simple prejudice or slander, or do they tell us something about the kind of religion Christianity was during this period? What do comments of this sort mean in ι the world in which Christianity was first making its way? Most of the comments of outsiders on Christianity have come down to us in fragmentary form. They appear either as casual and perfunctory observations in letters or essays or histories dealing with some other topic, or they derive from books attacking Christianity that were destroyed. When Christianity gained control of the Roman Empire it suppressed the writings of its critics and even cast them into flames. Yet the number of fragments that survive1—ironically, in the works of Christians written to refute them—is considerable, and they offer a vivid and uncommon portrait of Christianity; An early example is the book True Doctrine^ written by Celsus against Christianity in approximately 180 C.E. Everything we know of Celsus's book comes from Origen, a Christian theologian and apologist from Alexandria. Origen wrote a massive defense of Christianity against Celsus (Contra Celsum) seventy years later. That the work still needed refutation seventy years after it was written is an indication of how seriously Christians took its arguments. In his book Origen cited Celsus at length and verbatim. If one analyzes these fragments of Celsus in Origen without the benefit of Origen's interpretation and 1, The standard work remains Pierre de Labriolle, La Reaction рагеппе. Etude sur la er е polemique antichretienne du I аи VI siede, 2d ed. (Paris, 1948), For recent surveys, see articles by Nestle, Bénko, and Meredith in Suggestions for Further Reading.

INTRODUCTION

XVH

rebuttal, and places Celsus's observations within the framework of the philosophical thinking of his time, it is possible, with some confidence, to reconstruct what he thought about Christianity, how it compared to other religious cults and the more traditional forms of religion, what Christians believed and how they lived, and why Christianity should be resisted. Besides Celsus, two other major opponents of Christianity in the ancient world also write works devoted exclusively to Christianity. The first of these, Porphyry, a Nepplatonic philosopher, lived in the third century, and the other, Julian, a Roman emperor, reigned in the fourth century. These works, too, can be reconstructed through the books of Christian apologists who sought to refute their charges: Other than these writers, there are a number of authors from whom we have less information but who do help us to fill out the picture of the Christians as the Romans saw them. Among these are Pliny; Galen, the physician-philosopher who came to know Christians in Rome in the middle of the second century; and Lucían, the satirist who poked fun at the Christians, as he did at everything else in his world. This book is a portrayal of pagan criticism of Christianity from its beginning in the early second century to the time of Julian in the late fourth century, a period of almost three hundred years. I base my discussion on what pagan observers themselves said and I seek to place their views within the context of their religious, intellectual, and social world. .1 have conscientiously refrained from viewing pagan observations in light of what Christians said or may have thought about them, or even in light of whether they are "true" or not—that is, whether they reflect what we think Christianity to have been or is. Much of what the pagan critics say is "true" but cannot be fitted into the*Christian self-understanding. I am convinced that the perceptions of outsiders tell us something· significant about the character of the Christian movement, and that without the views of those who made up the world in which Christianity grew to maturity, we will never understand what Christianity was or is. How something is perceived is an aspect of what it is. This is especially true in the social world, where

xviii

INTRODUCTION

the perception of others is an essential part of the reality people inhabit. We have a distorted view of the history of early Christianity. The historian of the Roman Empire, who by training and perspective could view Christianity within the larger historical picture, has seldom bothered to look closely at the Christian sources. The student of Christianity, who does know the sources and the unique problems of early Christian history, is usually familiar with the pagan sources only at second hand and has inflated the Christian part of the canvas beyond all reasonable proportion. The historian of Christianity has given the impression that the rest of the canvas is simply background for the closeup—relegating the general history of the times to an introductory chapter of vague generalities. In his recent book, Paganism in the Roman Empire^ the historian Ramsay MacMullen makes an interesting observation concerning Adolf von Harnack's The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries^ one of the classic studies of early Christianity published in this century. "Among its thousands of references to sources . . . I can find not one to a pagan source and hardly a line indicating the least attempt to find out what non-Christians thought and believed. Thus to ignore the prior views of converts or to depict the mission as operating on a clean slate is bound to strike an historian as very odd indeed."2 Much has happened in the study of early Christianity since Harnack's day, and in the study of Roman history there has been a burgeoning interest in the religions of the Roman world, in Greco-Roman philosophy, and in the social world of the early Roman Empire. Yet little of this material actually makes its way into the general accounts of early Christianity. This disjunction between Roman history and Christian history is also reflected in the ancient documents. For almost a century Christianity went unnoticed by most men and women in the Roman Empire. When the Christian movement first appeared, there was little common ground of understanding between Christians and non-Chris2. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981), 206 n. 16.

INTRODUCTION

XIX

tians. The earliest Christian writings, highly theological and directed .primarily at Christian readers, present the life of Jesus and the beginning of the church as the turning point in history, whereas nonChristians see the Christian community as a tiny, peculiar, antisocial, irreligious sect, drawing its adherents from the lower strata of society. In the section on Palestine in his Natural History—z book written approximately a generation after the death of Jesus—the elder Pliny does not even mention Jesus or the beginnings of Christianity. By that time many of the books of the New Testament had already been written. The first mention of the Christian movement in a Roman writer does not occur until eighty years after the beginning of Christianity. One of my purposes in writing this book is to bring the world of ancient Rome into closer conjunction with that of early Christianity. By focusing on 'the comments of Roman and Greek writers on Christianity, I show how pagans thought about religion and philosophy and the society iii which they lived, while at the same time shedding light on early Christianity. The specificity of pagan observations on Christianity allows a unique perspective unavailable in other writings from the period. I hope to provide the student of Christianity with an unusual vantage point from which to view early Christianity and to locate the Christian movement within the world in which it arose. The book also has a theological purpose. I originally began to study pagan criticism of Christianity because I was interested in the early Christian apologists, those Christian thinkers who sought to present an intelligible and reasonable case for Christian claims within the language and the ways of thinking of the Greco-Roman world. The more I read the apologists, however, the more I realized that they could not be understood without first studying the attitudes of outsiders to Christianity, the ideas the apologists were trying to combat as well as the beliefs they thought compatible with Christianity and in whose framework they presented the Christian message. Most of the early apologists were brought up as pagans and only converted to Chris^ tianity later in life. Trie spiritual and intellectual world in which they were nurtured remained a part of their thinking after they became Christians.

χχ

INTRODUCTION

I intended to return to the apologists after I had completed the study of the pagan authors, but I found the pagan material so interesting that this book is concerned only with it. Yet what the pagan critics say about Christianity is not insignificant for Christian theology. Many of the themes which have played a role in the history of Christian thought and are still debated today were first adumbrated in the dialogue between Christianity and the classical intellectual tradition. Some of these are: faith and reason, the relation of God to the world, creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), the relation of Christianity to Judaism, the status of· Jesus and his relation to God, the historical reliability of the Scriptures, Christianity and civil religion, and revelation of God in history. In some cases—for example, the doctrine of creation out of nothing—it was a pagan critic who first grasped that Christian statements about God required a new view of the process of creation. Several decades before Christian thinkers had given attention to the problem, Galen pointed out the philosophical difficulties of the biblical presentation of creation. Christian thinkers were forced to think through their views with greater care. Not long after pagans had raised the issue in debates with Christians, Christian theologians began to assert, for the first time in the history of Christian thought, that creation out of nothing is a fundamental doctrine. In this case, as well as in others, the commentaries of pagans are necessary to understanding how and why Christian doctrines came to take the form they did. I have written this book with the general reader in mind and with an eye to students of Christian history and theology. It is based on my own reading of the ancient sources, but it is not intended as a scholarly monograph and much of what I say will be familiar to scholars in the field. My procedure has been the following. I have selected five major figures, three from the second century—Pliny the Younger, Galen, Celsus—one from the third century—Porphyry—and one from the fourth century—Julian—and I have centered my discussion on their views, using the comments of others to fill out the picture. I have not tried to cover everything but to present the attitudes of Ro-

INTRODUCTION

xxi

mans to Christianity through the eyes of these key figures. The sources themselves are intrinsically interesting, but by focusing on individual persons about whom we have fairly extensive information I have sought to give concreteness and life to the narrative. In chapters 2 and 31 depart from this scheme somewhat to develop two important aspects of the story: the role of religious associations in the Roman world and the attitude toward superstition, the earliest characterization of the Christian movement. These topics are suggested by the observations of Pliny discussed in chapter 1. The term Romans in the title refers to the Roman Empire and its inhabitants. Many of the authors discussed in the book wrote in Greek.

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ABBREVIATIONS

References to ancient sources are given in the body of the text. For the major figures discussed in the book—for example,. Pliny or Celsus—information concerning texts and translations is given in the appropriate chapter. Many of the other Greek arid Roman authors are available in the bilingual editions of the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). In the case of lesser-known authors, I have given the name of the editor. „ Christian writings are cited either in the Patrología Graeca (PG) and Patrología Latina (PL) of J. G. Migne, Patrolqgiae cursus compleius (Paris, 1844 if.), or in modern critical editions such as Sources chrétiennes (Paris, 1941 ff.) and Corpus Christianorum (Turnhout and Paris, 1953 fE). Abbreviations of ancient works are taken from the standard léxica: A Greek English Lexicon, .tomp. Henry, George Liddell and Robert Scott, rev. Henry Stuart Jories with the assistance pf Roderick McKenzie (Oxford, 1968); Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P, G. W. Glare (Oxford, 1982); A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Oxford, 1961); znaDictionnaireLatin-Frangais des Äuteurs Chretiens, ed. Albert Blaise and Henri Chirat (Turnhout, Belgium, 1954).

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I PLINY: A ROMAN GENTLEMAN

R

OUNDING CAPE MALEA, THE SOUTHERNMOST TIP OF the Greek Peloponnese, in mid-August 111 C.E., Pliny's ship sailed into the dark waters of the Aegean Sea. A few days later the party from Rome put in at Ephesus, a Greek city on the western coast of Asia Minor where die traveler could pick up one of two roads leading to the East, When Pliny departed from Rome several weeks earlier, he had planned to disembark at Ephesus and proceed by carriage to his destination in Bithynia, a Roman province some two hundred miles to the northeast on the shores of the Black Sea; but the weather was sweltering and shortly after his party had begun the overland trip he came down with a fever. An aristocratic Roman gentleman who seldom traveled at all, Pliny was accustomed to spending the summer in the comfort of one of his country villas. Overcome by heat and fever, he changed plans, hired a small boat, and made the remainder of the trip by coaster. On September 17 he arrived in Bithynia to assume his post as governor of the province and representative of the emperor M. Ulpius Trajan, In the first of some sixty letters he was to write Trajan during the next year and a half, he reported that he had already set about one of his chief assignments, the examination of the financial affairs of the cities in Bithynia. "I had hoped to arrive earlier, but I cannot complain of the delay as I was in time to celebrate your birthday in my province, and this should be a good omen. I am now examining the finances of the town of Prusa, expenditures, revenues, and sums owing, and finding the inspection increasingly necessary the more I look into their accounts" (Ep. 10.17). ι

2

PLINY: A/ROMAN GENTLEMAN

THE MAKING OF A ROMAN OFFICIAL When Pliny left that summer for Asia Minor, he looked back with satisfaction on a notable career in public life. Appointment as the emperor's legate was only the most recent and, Pliny thought, long deserved honor he had received in the thirty years since he first held public office. He had been born fifty years earlier in 62 C.E. in Comum, a town at the foot of the Alps not too far from present-day Milan, and he first entered public life in 79-80. Little is known of Pliny's father, but his mother's family belonged to the landed municipal gentry of northern Italy. Her brother, G. Plinius Secundus (the Elder), adopted Pliny (the Younger) as a youth, providing him with the family pedigree necessary for advancement in public life. Pliny's uncle, the author of a monumental encyclopedia in thirtyseven books, the Natural History, was a distinguished Roman citizen of the senatorial class. On good terms with several emperors, he was said to have had the custom of visiting the emperor Vespasian before daybreak (the Romans rose early) to discuss matters of state; he dedicated his Natural History to another emperor, Titus. The elder Pliny died in 79 C.E. in the lava and flames spewing from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. His scientific curiosity had led him too close to the object of his study. From him Pliny inherited the family's Tuscan estate, worth 400,000 sesterces a year. Thus, through his mother's family Pliny acquired the requisites for a successful career: good family and wealth. As was the custom among aristocratic Romans, Pliny received his early education at home from private tutors. Even when their children were infants, wealthy Romans were careful to see that they were assigned nurses who spoke correctly. From the very beginning it was thought important that a child become accustomed to a style of speech that would not have to be unlearned at some later date. In Pliny's day Roman education consisted chiefly of the study of rhetoric, the skill an enterprising young man would need most for a life in the law courts or a position in the civil bureaucracy. Grammar, recitation, analysis of classical literary texts, imitation of the great stylists—these comprised the chief part of Pliny's education. At the age of fourteen

PLINY: A ROMAN GENTLEMAN

4

3

he was sent to Rome for advanced study in rhetoric under Quintilian, the greatest rhetorician in Roman history, a man who held a chair endowed by the emperor and from whom Pliny acquired a love of language and literature. By his own admission his greatest pleasure came from discussing the literary qualities of speeches delivered by himself or his friends before the senate, reading poetry to his wife in the evening, or spending long afternoons walking about the gardens of his villa listening to Greek or Latin verse or prose. Although Pliny harbored literary ambitions,„after little success at writing verse, he contented himself with the writing of letters. These letters, comprising nine books of twenty to thirty letters each from various periods in his life, and a tenth book of sixty letters written to Trajan while .Pliny was governor in Bithynia-Pontus, are the chief source for Pliny's life .and our surest guide to the man, the world he inhabited, and the scope of his interests.1 Commenting on these letters, Ronald Syme, the biographer of Tacitus, a contemporary and close friend of Pliny's, wrote: [Pliny] displays people in their daily pursuits or confronting the important events of upper and niiddle class life in a stable society characterized by ease and refinement. Betrothal and matrimony, , wills and bequest, the illness of a friend or bereavement in a family, the first flowering of poetical or oratorical genius, the early stages of youthful ambition in the career of honors, the multifarious occupations enjoined by metropolitan life, the ceremonial obsequies of illustrious men—such are among the subjects of Pliny's epistolary essays.2 When his education was completed, Pliny's career began on a conventional note. He became an advocate before.the centumviraLcourt, a lower tribunal hearing cases of property and inheritance. He stayed 1. Text of Pliny's letters, R, A. B. Mynbrs, ed,; Epistularum libri decem-(Oxford, 1963). Citations are from the English translation by Betty Radice, The Letters of the Younger Pliny (New York: Penguin Books, 1963). 2. Ronald Syme, Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 1: 97; on Pliny's life, see pp. 75-85. Also M. Shuster, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertum-Wissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1951), 21.1: 439 ff. Several inscriptions on Pliny are conveniently translated in Radice, 303-04.

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PLINY: A ROMAN GENTLEMAN

there only a short time, for he had not yet served in the army. As military experience was a prerequisite for a successful political career, Pliny went to Syria to serve as tribune in a unit stationed there. But military service held little interest for him. Lacking any desire to command legions or to become a military hero, he discovered that he could put his administrative and financial skills to work even while in the army.. He arranged an assignment away from the troops auditing the accounts of auxiliary legions. Pliny's brief tour of duty in Syria was the only time in his life he lived outside of Italy until his appointment as governor in Asia Minor in 111 c.E. He shuttled back and forth between Rome and his several country residences, and on occasion he traveled to his hometown of Comum in northern Italy; but until he was almost fifty, except for this brief stint in the army, he never resided anywhere except Rome. His geographical home was also his spiritual home. Pliny made no grand tour of the Mediterranean for pleasure or for adventure; he did not make the trek to Athens, as had some Romans, to study philosophy, nor to Egypt to seek the wisdom of the Orient. His world was that of the privileged upper class of Rome, his values those of the political and moral traditions of his ancestors, and his intellectual horizon that of Latin rhetorical education. At one time in his life he seems to have been on friendly terms with a group of philosophers, but the chief business of Pliny and his friends was politics and the administration of the civil and financial affairs, of Rome. A conservative by education and by temperament, Pliny was secure in the world he inherited from his family, his fellow aristocrats, and his countrymen. "Pliny moves among active professional men who take their responsibilities seriously; many of them owe their position in the Senate to the Emperor's recognition of their merit, and none can afford to squander his capital or neglect his obligations."3 How long Pliny stayed in Syria we do not know. He seems to have become bored rather quickly with life in a military garrison and grew eager to return home to begin his political career in government. On 3. Radice, 26,

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return to Rome, he was appointed to the quaestorship, the first office in the course of honors and the traditional door through which men made their way to the senate. Pliny was in his mid-twenties. The quaestor was a low-level magistry in the civil service, though Pliny's appointment was singular in that he was designated quaestor augusti (quaestor of the emperor), an honor reserved for men of birth. At the time Pliny assumed this position the truculent and ruthless Domitian was ruling. As quaestor of the emperor, Pliny had the delicate task of conveying Domitian's messages to the senate, where many of his opponents could be found. But Pliny survived under Domitian, no doubt partly because of his youth but also because he had already learned the political arts of compromise and flattery. Moving quickly up the political ladder, Pliny became tribune of the people, an office more important in name than in influence. But it too was a stepping stone to a more prestigious appointment. Always earnest, Pliny took his position seriously and later claimed, somewhat dreamily, that as tribune he had given up all his private court work to serve the people, as a whole "rather than give my professional service to a few." After his term as tribune Pliny became praetor, the highest honorary office in Rome next to the consulship. He then accepted a number of administrative posts in the government—firs t as prefect for military finances and later as prefect of the state treasury. In the first position he managed a pension fund for disabled soldiers, a place he held until 96 O.E., the year Domitian was assassinated. Though Pliny had prospered under Domitian, like most well-placed Romans he was relieved at the emperor's death. Domitian had not only banished some rhetoricians and philosophers from Rome, he had also arbitrarily and indiscriminately exiled distinguished citizens, accused some of his own provincial governors of conspiracy, and driven from public life good and able men. "He robbed Rome of her best and noblest sons, unopposed. No hand was raised to avenge them," wrote the poet Juvenal. In this atmosphere of fear and suspicion good men were unwilling to speak their minds to friends lest they be implicated as traitors and summarily whisked off to exile or death.

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In 100 C.E. Pliny became consul with his long-time friend Gprnutus Tertullus. Largely ceremonial, the office of consul had little to do with the actual governing of the empire. Its tenure lasted two months and its duties included presiding over the senate, conducting trials, and arranging for games and festivals in honor of the emperor. But, like a number of the other offices held by Pliny, it opened the way to further advancement. After his consulship, the last office in the cursus honorum^ Pliny was still a young man—not yet forty. He returned to private legal practice to await a new appointment from r the emperor. Since the accession of Trajan to the imperial throne in 98 C.E., Pliny had been waiting to receive appointment to one of the official state priesthoods, a customary and coveted honor. The priesthoods, divided into four chief colleges, were public offices held by persons of high birth who had rendered distinguished service to the city. That there were only sixty offices for two to four hundred eligible men made the honor particularly .desirable. Often one had to wait years before a position became vacant. Because the Romans thought that the official cults were an integral part of the public life of the city, they took it for granted that the priesthoods should be offered to the most prominent social and political figures. The practice had been defended by Cicero, who said that the "most distinguished citizens safeguard religion by the good administration of the state and safeguard the wise conduct of religion" (Dom. l). In Rome the practice of religion was a public matter. Pliny's appointment dragged on for several years, but when it was offered it was more than he had hoped for. In 103 he was nominated to fill the vacant position of Julius Frontinus, an eminent and distinguished citizen, who had held the augúrate, the same priesthood held by Cicero, the great Roman statesman and orator, a hundred and fifty years earlier. And to his great delight Pliny was appointed at an earlier age. The comparison did not escape him. To a friend he wrote: Ci Thank you for your very proper congratulations on my appointment to the office of augur. . . . As I have reached the same priesthood and consulship at a much earlier age than [Cicero] did, I hope I may attain .to something of his genius at least in later life" (Ép. 4.8). His com-

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ment sounds vain and self-serving, but the sensibilities of the Romans were different from ours. They openly praised their own accomplishments and were not embarrassed to seek glory. To another friend, Tacitus the historian, Pliny once wrote, "I believe that your histories will be immortal; a prophecy which will surely prove correct. That is why (I frankly admit) I am anxious to appear in them" (Ep. 7.33). Shortly after his appointment as augur, Pliny was elected president of the curators of the Tiber, the board responsible for keeping the riverbanks in repair and maintaining Rome's sewer system. In a modern city he would have been head of the sanitation department or the environmental protection administration. Pliny's skills lay in finances, management, and law, and these could be adapted to fit various administrative jobs. Practical and businesslike, he was thoroughly suited to the position and he enjoyed its challenge. But eventually he grew restless, not so much with the job as because of his own ambitions. He realized that he was approaching that time in life when a major political and administrative appointment should be forthcoming. For a man in his position, the most predictable next step would be a position as governor in one of the provinces. In anticipation of such an appointment, his letters reflect a growing interest in provincial matters and an increasing preoccupation with the qualities necessary for holding the office. Pliny was not disappointed. In 109 (or 110), he was appointed as the emperor's personal legate in the Asian province of Bithynia-Pontus. He joined an exclusive club of several dozen men who held Rome's power in distant lands and who were symbols of authority as well-as judges and arbiters in legal matters in the provinces. Assuming that this would be his last official position before retirement, Pliny was determined that his career culminate in a distinguished tenure of office. He would be no "ugly Roman." His rule would be wise, just, understanding, respectful of local traditions, honest. In a letter to a friend who governed Achaca in Greece, Pliny enunciated the principles he thought should guide the office. He urged Maximus to have regard for the local gods, to honor the legends of the people's past, not to detract from their dignity or pride, not to be domineering.

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No one who bears the insignia of supreme authority is despised unless his own meanness and ignobility show that he must be the first to despise himself. It is a poor thing if authority can only test its powers by insults to others, and if homage is to be won by terror; affection is far more effective than fear in gaining you your ends. Fear disappears at your departure, affection remains, and whereas fear engenders hatred, affection develops into genuine regard. Never, never forget (I must repeat this) the official tide you bear, and keep clearly in mind what it means and how much it means to establish order in the constitution of free cities, for nothing can serve a city like ordered rule and nothing is so precious as freedom. [Ep. 8.24] With these thoughts revolving in his mind, Pliny began to make plans for his trip to Asia Minor. TRAVELS OF A PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR Bithynia-Pontus lay on the northern coast of Asia Minor. Two prov.inces, each with its own history prior to annexation to the Roman Empire but now linked together in one administrative unit, comprised a narrow strip of land some fifty to seventy miles wide along the southern shore of the Black Sea. Bithynia in the west was more populous and Hellenized, while Pontus had only a few major cities and still bore traces of the native culture. The land was mountainous but broken up with valleys and plains suitable for farming and ample pastures for grazing. Wool from the sheep was widely sought, especially in the neighboring provinces, where it was quite scarce. Rich forests on the mountains provided good timber for shipbuilding as well as for furniture, the maple and mountain nut trees being especially suitable for the building of tables, according to the geographer Strabo (Geography 12.3.2). The abundance of the land, combined with good fishing off the coast, made Bithynia-Pontus commercially important for the Roman world. Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia, had bequeathed the area to Rome

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in 75 B.C.E, when Rome was extending her empire into the eastern Mediterranean. A few years later, in 64 B.C.E., Rome annexed Pontus. During the reorganization of the empire under Augustus, in 27 B.C.E. the area had become a senatorial province, which meant its governor was appointed by and responsible to the senate гафег than to the emperor. Trajan's decision to send Pliny as his own personal representative in the Dearly second century C.E. indicated that he thought the province needed much closer supervision than it had received to date. Pliny arrived in Bithynia at a time Edward Gibbon called the happiest in mankind's history. "In the second century of the Christian Era," he writes, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers ofthat extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disci" plined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantage of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence; the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers*of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Ñerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines.4 Gibbon's glowing description of the second century is exaggerated, but from Pliny's perspective the account of life at that time would not be far from the truth. The turbulence of the last fifty years—conflict and dissent at home, troubles on the frontiers, civil war, and especially the bitterness and resentment over the arbitrary and capricious rule of Domitian—had given way to a time of peace, prosperity, and stability. The emperor Trajan, though a soldier from Spain, was remembered by later generations as a symbol of kindliness. Crabby old Juvenal the satirist might have thought the world was badly out of joint— 4, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline find Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols. (London [1910], 1978), vol. 1, chap. 1, "Introduction."

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all those Greeks and Syrians filling up Rome with their strange and arcane practices—but Pliny supported and encouraged the new generation and did not think that the men of the past were superior to those of the present. He looked out on a world where things were better than they had been for generations. The cities in the area to which Pliny was sent were prospering, but some had misused their resources. Overly enthusiastic about outdoing their neighbors with a new amphitheatre or a more spacious gymnasium, some cities simply lacked the funds to carry out their construction projects. Building permits were required to prohibit construction when "it is a matter of rivalry with another city." Ordinary building remained unregulated, but competitive building was curtailed. 'Those poor Greeks all love a gymnasium," said the emperor Trajan. The rivalry of these ancient cities is reminiscent of large corporations exhibiting their corporate egos in shimmering glass towers surrounded by pink terrazzos, marble fountains, and bronze sculptures. A primary reason for sending Pliny to Bithynia-Pontus was to inspect the cities and help them deal with their financial woes. But there were other problems. The emperor had heard reports of political unrest and factionalism, A contemporary of Pliny, Dio Chrysostom, was troubled by the growing number of political factions vying with each other and causing unnecessary divisions within the cities. Sedition is perhaps too strong a word, but Dio was concerned enough to make a number of public speeches in which he warned against conducting the affairs of the city "by means of political clubs" (Or. 45.8). How much better, he said, would it be if citizens lived together in harmony rather than abusing each other. There were also signs of social unrest. After a hike in prices in Nicomedia, one of the chief cities of Bithynia, the council had difficulty controlling the populace and had to appeal to the Roman proconsul to restore authority. It may be that one of Pliny's directives from Trajan was to dissolve all "associations" or "clubs," whether political or not, in the hope of keeping order in the province. As governor, Pliny's assignments were the following: (1) to look into the irregularities in the handling of funds (some cities were on

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the verge of bankruptcy); (2) to examine the municipal administration of the cities; (3) to put down any political or potentially political disorders; (4) to deal with whatever criminal cases were pending; (5) to investigate the military situation in the provinces. Pliny began his tour of the province in Prusa, a city in the western sector of Bithynia. His activities there are illustrative of the problems he faced as governor and his style of administration. After examining the finances of Prusa, he discovered that private individuals had been embezzling public funds designated for building purposes. He wrote to Trajan, who advised him to put the financial affairs of the city in order. Then he learned that there was a problem with wardens at the local jail and wrote Trajan for a directive. A prefect from the coast called on Pliny and requested that more soldiers be assigned to him. Trajan replied that he also heard from the prefect and told Pliny to decide whether the prefect really needed more soldiers or whether he c simply wanted to extend his authority. The public interest must be our sole concern," wrote Trajan, "and as far as possible we should keep to the rule that soldiers must not be withdrawn from active ser3 vice. ' Finally Pliny inspected the public bath and forwarded to Rome the request of the city to build а пелу one. Trajan replied that the city could build the bath as long as it did not strain the city's finances (Ep. 10,17-24). With matters such as these occupying his time and energy, Pliny moved on to the next city on his itinerary, Nicomedia. Nicomedia, the capital city of the province of Bithynia, had long been one of the favorite cities of the Roman emperors. Already at the time of Augustus its citizens had erected a temple to Rome and another to Augustus, and over the years Nicomedia overshadowed its neighboring cities in the scale and extent of its public buildings. Nevertheless, its finances had not been well managed and there were social problems, such as a near riot over food, mentioned earlier. When Pliny first arrived there he dealt with a number of perfunctory matters, but during a brief trip to Claudiopolis, a nearby city, a more serious problem arose. A large fire had ravaged the central city, destroying a number of private houses, a clubhouse for elder citizens, and a large temple of Isis. After investigating the aftermath of the fire, Pliny con-

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eluded that it would not have caused such extensive damage had the people been better organized to deal withfires. From his reading of the Gospels he knew that Jesus was reported to have spent some time in Egypt. From this he concluded that Jesus "was brought up in secret and hired himself out as a workman in Egypt and after having tried his hand at certain magical powers he returned from there, and on account of those powers gave himself the title Son of God" (c. Cels. 1.38). Here Celsus raises a point that will become central to his attack on Christianity. Did Jesus' ability to work wonders mean that he was the son of God, or was he simply another successful magician like others who could be found in the cities and towns of the Roman Empire:1 To Celsus the answer was evident. Jesus belonged among the "sorcerers who profess to do wonderful miracles . . . who for a few obols make known their sacred lore in the middle of the market-place and drive daemons out of men and blow away diseases and invoke the souls of heroes" (c. Cels. 1.68). Celsus's charge that Jesus was a magician was not separate from his overall criticism of the Christian movement.5 He wished to show that Christians had no basis for claiming that Jesus was the son of God. He 5. See Eugene V. Gallagher, Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus, Society of Biblical Literature, Dissertation Series, no, 64 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982).

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was not the only one to work wonders; others had similar power. The question was not whether Jesus had worked wonders, or whether his followers, by invoking his name, could do the same. The issue was: Is there any reason, on the basis of Jesus' miracles, to call him Son of God? To see how Celsus deals with the question we must now turn to a fuller examination of his presentation of Christian teaching. THE DEFICIENCIES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Celsus not only read Christian writings; he also understood what he read. He knew that Christianity originated as a movement within Judaism and that Christians continued to use the Jewish Scriptures; he knew that most Jews did not accept the new movement and that its relation to Judaism was an embarrassment to Christians; he was familiar with the gospel accounts of Jesus' life, his teaching, his suffering and death, and he realized the importance of the resurrection in Christian teaching; he had some familiarity with Christian worship and practice. It is also likely that Celsus was acquainted with the first Christian apologetic writings, specifically the work of Justin Martyr, whose apologies had appeared approximately two decades before Celsus wrote his True Doctrine. Some scholars believe that Celsus wrote his book in response to Justin's work and that the specific form of his argument can be attributed to his familiarity with Justin.6 Clearly Celsus has been able to sort out many of the things he had heard and read about Christians and to focus on the most significant, and vulnerable, points of Christian teaching. From his reading of Christian writings he knew that Christian intellectuals were sensitive to arguments from the Greek philosophical tradition and that they recognized the need to argue their case in the public forum of ideas. Though Celsus might make rhetorical points against Christian reliance on faith instead of reason, his more serious arguments assume that Christian thinkers wished to be judged by the same standards as others. On an initial reading Celsus's book might suggest, as did Galen's 6. Andresen, Logos und Nomos, 308 ff.

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comments on Christian doctrine, that Christianity offered little that was new, its teachings simply reflecting, in less sophisticated form, what others had said earlier. Celsus said as much when he observed that many of the things taught by Christians "have been better expressed among the Greeks, who refrained from making exalted claims and from asserting that they had been announced by a god or the son of a god55 (c. CeU. 6.1). Later in the same book he mentions a number of teachings that fall into this category, for example, the notion of the highest good (c. Cels. 6.4-5), certain views about the origin of the world (6.49—50), and ideas about immortality. "Divinely inspired men of ancient times related that there is a happy life for fortunate souls. Some called it the Islands of the Blessed; others the Elysian Fields because they were there set free from the evils of the world. Thus Homer says: 'But immortals will send thee to the Elysian Fields / and the ends of the earth where life is very easy.' And Plato, who thinks the soul immortal, quite openly calls that region where the soul is sent a land . . ." (c. Cels. 7.28). However, it is clear from a closer reading of Celsus's work that he recognized, as did Galen, that Christianity had set forth some new and original religious teachings, and these are the chief target of his polemic. I will discuss only three of the more important of his theological criticisms. The first is the Christian claim that God came down from the heavens to live on earth among men. This assertion, says Celsus, "is most shameful and no lengthy argument is required to refute it" (c. Cels. 4.2). God is not the kind of being who can undergo mutation or alteration. He cannot change from the purity and perfection of divinity to the blemished and tarnished state of humans. "God is good and beautiful and happy, and exists in a most beautiful state. If then he comes down to men, he must undergo a change, a change from good to bad, from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to misfortune, and from what is best to what is most wicked. . . . It is the nature only of a mortal being to under-go change and remoulding, whereas it is the nature of an immortal being to remain the same without alteration. Accordingly, God could not be capable of undergoing this change" (c. Cels. 4.14). What makes this observation telling is that Christians also

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claimed to believe that God was an immutable spiritual being who was "uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, infinite, who . . . is encompassed by light, beauty, spirit, and indescribable power" (Athenagoras, Leg. pro Christ. 10). Christians claimed to have a conception of God similar to that of the most sophisticated of the pagan philosophers, including Celsus. In effect, then, Celsus asks: If you truly claim to believe in the same kind of God that we do, how can you assert that God has taken on human form? How can a deity who is by definition immutable undergo change and alteration to live as a human being? If one grants that God is omnipotent and omniscient, and rules the world from a lofty throne in the heavens, asks Celsus, ccWhat is the purpose of such a descent on the part of God? Was it in order to learn what was going on among humans" (c. Cels, 4.2)? Further, if God is all-powerful why did he need to come to earth to bring about a moral reformation in mankind? Was he not capable of doing this "by divine power" without such a descent (c. Cels. 4.3)? This point leads Celsus to an argument that was to recur in pagan polemics for the next several centuries. If Christians do insist that God appeared in human form at a specific time in history, what happened to the countless generations who lived before Jesus? "Is it only now after such a long age that God has remembered to judge the human race? Did he not care before" (c. Cels. 4.8)? How can God concern himself only with humans who live at a particular time in history? The Christian view presents an arbitrary and capricious God who acts willfully without regard to what is best for all creatures. Hence Celsus is led to the conclusion that Christians "babble about God impiously and impurely" and it is only people who do not know better who are drawn to Christian beliefs (c. Cels. 4.10). Those who are well informed on theological and philosophical questions can see the irrationality of Christian doctrine. A second major criticism is a variant of Galen's argument against the notion that "all things are possible to God." Celsus, however, discusses the maxim in connection with the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. He has some sharp words against the account of

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creation in Genesis, specifically about a story that presents the "greatest God" creating "so much on one day and again so much more on the second, and so on with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth" (6.60). His more serious criticism, however, is directed against the idea that God could reverse the natural process of the disintegration of the human body or that a body that had rotted could be restored again. "For what sort of body, after being entirely corrupted, could return to its original nature and that same condition which it had before it was dissolved? As they have nothing to say in reply, they escape to a most outrageous refuge by saying that 'anything is possible to God.' But, indeed neither can God do what is shameful nor does He desire what is contrary to nature" (c. Cels. 5.14). The resurrection of the dead at the end of time and the resurrection of Jesus appear fairly frequently as topics in Celsus's work. As Origen observed, Celsus "often reproached us about the resurrection" (c. Gels. 8.49), suggesting that pagan critics realized that the resurrection was one of the central and distinctive Christian doctrines. Celsus located the theological difficulty of the resurrection in the Christian understanding of God, specifically in God's relation to the created order. Christians did not have a rational view of the deity. Instead of recognizing that God was subject to the laws of nature and reason, Christians believed in a God who stood completely above and beyond nature and was therefore capable of doing whatever he willed no matter how much it disrupted the order of the world, "As for the flesh, which is full of things which it is not even nice to mention," says Celsus, "God would neither desire nor be able to make it everlasting contrary to reason. For he himself is the reason of everything that exists; therefore He is not able to do anything contrary to reason, or to his own character" (c.^Cels, 5;14). A God who is contrary to reason is not a fit object of devotion. A third major criticism was also leveled at the Christian view of God, specifically, the consequences of the worship of Jesus for the idea that God is one. If the Christians "worshipped no other God but one, perhaps they would have had a valid argument against others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who ap-

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peared recently, and yet think it does not offend God if they also worship his servant" (c. Cels. 8.12). By the time that Celsus wrote it was widely known that Jesus was not only the founder of the Christian association, but that he had become the object of worship and adoration. In a passage already cited, Lucían said that Christians "worship the man who was crucified in Palestine" (Peregrinus 11), and Pliny had said that Christians sing hymns to Christ "as to a god." Now Celsus had no difficulty accepting the idea that a man who had performed wondrous works or distinguished himself by his life and teachings should be given adoration. Some of the Greek gods, for instance, Heracles and Orpheus, were known to have once been men. Some men, called heroes by the Greeks, had been translated to divine status. "In the same manner," says Plutarch, "in which water is seen to be generated from earth, air from water, and fire from air, as their substance is borne upward, even so from men into heroes and from heroes into daimones the better souls obtain their transmutation. But from the daimones a few souls still in the long reach of time because of supreme excellence, come, after being purified, to share completely in divine qualities" (De def. or, 415c). In principle, then, Celsus had no objection to the elevation of a man, even Jesus, to divine status. But was Jesus really deserving of such honor:1 Were Christians justified in ranking Jesus with such men as Heracles, Asclepius, or Orpheus? Some of the other men Christians (and Jews) revered were more deserving than Jesus. "A far more suitable person for you than Jesus would have been Jonah with his gourd, or Daniel who escaped from wild beasts, or those of whom stories yet more incredible than these are told" (c. Cels. 7.53). Jesus was a lowgrade magician, not a great hero like the men of old. Celsus's criticism of the elevation of Jesus to divine status, however, has another dimension. By offering such adoration to Jesus, Christians make him a rival of the one high God, the God above the heavens, as Celsus calls him. If Christians taught that "God is father of all and that we really ought to worship him alone" there would be no quarrel. But Christians make Jesus almost equal to God, "not because they are paying very great reverence to God but because they are exalting Jesus

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excessively" (с. Cels. 8.14). When Origen read Celsus's statement that Christians set up Jesus as equal to, or even greater than, the one high God, he said that Celsus had obviously got things wrong because we "do not hold that the son is mightier than the Father, but inferior" (c. Cels. 8.15)! For Origen, Jesus is clearly subordinate to God the Father. Celsüs, however, has a point, and it is central to his case against Christianity. Christians threatened the hard-won view that there was only one God, a conviction shared by many pagan intellectuals in the early empire, and which was thought to be distinctly superior to the polytheism and anthropomorphism of popular religion. Celsus presents his views as an interpretation of a stock quotation from Homer's Iliad (Iliad 2.205). "Let there be one king, him to whom the son of crafty Kronos gave the power." This line was taken to mean that there is one God who is king and father of all, a spiritual being who transcends the world and who is the source and origin of all that is. Another second-century pagan philosopher said: God being one yet has many names, being called after all the various conditions which he himself inaugurates. We call him Zen and Zeus, using the two names in the same sense. . . . He is called the son of Kronos and of Time. . . . He is the God of Lightning and Thunder. . . . Moreover, after the fruits he is called the Fruitful of God, after cities the City-God; he is God of Birth, God of the house-court, God of kindred and God of our fathers. . . . He is ... in very truth the Savior and God of Freedom, and to complete the tale of his tides, God of heavens, and of the world below, deriving his names from all natural phenomena and conditions, inasmuch as he is himself the cause of all things." [Ps.Aristotle, De mundo^ 4P 1 a] Celsus expresses the same sentiment. "It makes no difference if one invokes the highest God or Zeus or Adonai or Sabaoth or Amoun, as the Egyptians do, or Papaios, as the Scythians do" (c. Cels. 5.41). Belief in the one god of many names did not mean that the one god was the only god. There were also many lesser deities: the stars and

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heavenly Bodies; the Olympian gods, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, et al.; the Capitoline gods, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva; the daimones who stood between earth and the higher gods; and, on the lowest level, heroes, outstanding men who had been raised to divine status. The one high God stood at the pinnacle of a host of deities who ruled the world with him. "In the midst of such contention, strife, and disagreement [on other matters]," wrote Maximus of Tyre, a second-century pagan intellectual, "you would see in all the earth one harmonious law and principle that there is one God, king and father of all, and many gods, sons of God, fellow rulers with God. The Greek says this, and the barbarian says it, the mainlander and the seafarer, the wise and the unwise" (Or. 11.5; ed. Holbein). When a person worshipped these lesser gods, it was assumed that he or she was also worshipping the one high god. Such worship did not detract from the honor shown the highest god, nor did it, in the view of the ancients, threaten the belief that God was one. To pagan observers schooled in these religions, the Christian worship of Jesus, however, seemed to compromise belief in the oneness of God. This was a significant insight into the character of the Christian tradition, for though Christian thinking was a long way from the time when,Christ would be declared "of the same substance" (homoousios) as God, and eventually one with the Father, the seeds of that development were apparent to pagan observers in the middle of the second century, a hundred and fifty years before the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.), when the view that Jesus was equal to God the Father was proclaimed. Excessive adoration of Jesus robbed the one high God of his proper due and discouraged devotion to other divine beings. Celsus argued that the "worship of God [the one high God] becomes more perfect by going through them all [the lesser gods]" (8.66), but he knew that Christians rejected this viewpoint. Even Lucían realized that the reverence which simple Christians showed to the huckster Peregrinus, "reverence as a god" as he put it, was different from the honor'given Jesus. Peregrinus was "next after that other"—namely, after Jesus (Peregrinus 11). The singular emphasis on Jesus implied that there

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were two supreme objects of worship, thereby destroying the most fundamental principle of the philosophical view of God. If there are two high gods, there is no longer a single source of all things. The two gods are really secondary gods who derive their existence from a more transcendent source, a yet higher God. For Celsus these philosophical ideas were intimately linked to the political structure of the Roman Empire ruled by one emperor. In the passage in which he cites the line from Homer, "Let there be one king" [i.e., one God] he says: "For if you overthrow this doctrine, it is probable that the emperor will punish you. If everyone were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent him from being abandoned, alone and deserted, while earthly things would come into the power of the most lawless and savage barbarians, and nothing would be heard among men either of your worship or of the true wisdom" (c. Cels. 8.68). So Christian worship of Jesus set up a rival God whose followers created an independent and factious group within the body politic. Here I wish only to call attention to the theological dimension of Celsus's defense of monotheism (more precisely henotheism, belief in one god without excluding belief in other lesser gods) against the Christian exaltation of Jesus. Later in the chapter I shall discuss the political and social dimensions of this aspect of his criticism. DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE STORY OF JESUS Celsus was the first critic of Christianity to give careful attention to the figure of Jesus. All of the earlier observers recognized that Jesus was the founder of the Christian movement, and several had begun to realize that he had also become an object of adoration among Christians, but the few comments we possess on Christianity up to the time of Galen were concerned more with Christians than with Jesus. No doubt part of the explanation for this omission is that earlier critics learned about Christianity by firsthand contact with Christians, but had little knowledge of the Christian scriptures, including the Gospels, whereas Celsus had studied the Gospels, and devoted a significant part

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of his book to an analysis of the accounts of Jesus' life retold there.7 He realized, as earlier observers had not, that his attack on Christianity would be ineffective if he dwelt only on Christian behavior or doctrine. Christian assertions about the truth of their way of life rested finally on the credibility of their claims concerning Jesus. Celsus's discussion of Jesus' life centered on the following points: the virgin birth, the baptism in the river Jordan by John, his death and resurrection from the dead, his miracles and his teachings. His arguments concerning the virgin birth, the baptism, and the resurrection are chiefly literary and historical. He attempts to show that there is insufficient evidence to verify the accounts recorded in the scriptures. But as he develops his case, it becomes clear that his historical criticism is secondary to another interest—namely, to show that Jesus' miracles prove he was a sorcerer, not a true sage. Of Celsus's several historical discussions the one on the virgin birth is the least interesting, but it is worth noting because it allows him to make the larger point about Jesus' reliance on magic. According to Celsus, it was Jesus himself who "fabricated the story of his birth from a virgin" (c. Cels. 1.28). Jesus had come from a Jewish village where he had been born of a "poor country woman who earned her living by spinning." This woman became pregnant by another man, a soldier named Panthera, and "was driven out by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, since she was convicted of adultery" (c, Cels. 1.32). While she was wandering about in disgrace she secretly gave birth to Jesus. When Jesus grew up he went to Egypt, and because he was poor, hired himself out as a workman and "there tried his hand at certain magical powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves; he returned full of conceit because of the powers, and on account of them gave himself the title Son of God" (c. Cels. 1.28). Where Celsus would have gotten this story is uncertain.8 Though some of the details are similar to the accounts in the Gospels, there is 7. For a discussion of literary and historical criticism of the Gospels in the second century, see Robert M. Grant, The Earliest Lives of Jesus (New York, 1961). 8. Chadwick, 31.

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clearly more here. For example, he provides a name for the man who impregnated Mary, Panthera. It is possible that this story was circulating in the empire, perhaps in Jewish circles, Celsus presents his criticism of Jesus not as his own but as that of a Jew, andihere are some references in Jewish literature to a Jesus ben Panthera, Jesus son of Panthera. Also, the name Panthera is close to the Greek term for virgin, partbenos. . Celsus was certainly aware that he had gone beyond the text of the Gospels, but his point is clear. The Gospels are based only on hearsay. Why should one give greater credibility to what is written in them than to other stories about Jesus? The accounts in the Gospels were written solely by Christians and passed on in Christian circles. Should the legends there be taken with greater seriousness than the many legends in Greek literature? The Christian Gospels offer no reliable basis on which to establish the truth of the accounts about Jesus. The baptism of Jesus is a good illustration. , Celsus imagines Jesus having a conversation about his baptism with a Jew.- 'When," says the Jew, ccyou were bathing near John, you say that ¡you saw what appeared to be a bird fly towards you out of the air. . . . What trustworthy witness saw this apparition, or who heard a voice from heaven adopting you as son of God? There is no proof except for your word and the evidence which you may produce of one of the men who were punished with you" (c. Cels. 1.41). Here the question centers wholly on historical verifiability. How does one substantiate that a certain event took place? What are the criteria by which one evaluates the veracity of a document claiming to record a historical event? (Origen read Celsus's discussion in this way. He discusses in elaborate detail the problem of historical verification, for example, the difficulty of establishing the historicity of events such as the war in Troy between Greeks and Trojans, the story about Oedipus and Jocasta, and so on.) Celsus said that any informed person4knows there are countless legends told about men and heroes, and the stories told about Jesus have no greater claim on historical truth than other legends. The only reasonable way to verify an account is to test the reliability of the witness. Since the account of the baptism of Jesus

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comes only from Jesus and his followers, one should be suspicious. Like other stories, it was concocted by the hero's followers to glorify .his deeds. A similar argument occurs with respect to the accounts of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. ' How many others produce wonders like this to convince simple hearers whom they exploit by deceit? They say that Zalmoxis, the slave of Pythagoras, also did this among the Scythians, and Pythagoras himself in Italy, and Rhampsinitus in Egypt. The lastnamed played dice with Demeter in Hades and returned bearing a gift from her, a golden napkin. Moreover, they say that Orpheus did this among the Odrysians, and Prptesilaus in Thessaly, and Heracles at Taenarum, and Theseus. But we must examine this question whether anyone who really died ever rose again with the same body. Or do you think that the stories of these others really are the legends which they appear to be, and yet that the' ending of your tragedy is to be regarded as noble and convincing—his cry from the cross when he expired, and the earthquake and the darkness? While he was alive he did not help himself, but after death he rose again and showed the marks of his punishment and how his hands had been pierced. But who say this? A hysterical female, as you say, and perhaps some other one of those who were deluded by the same sorcery, who either dreamt,in a certain state of mind and through wishful thinking had a hallucination due to some mistaken notion (an experience which has happened to thousands), or, which is more likely, wanted to impress the others by telling this fantastic tale, and so by this cock-and-bull story to provide a chance for other beggars. [2.55JV Christians cannot produce reliable witnesses to the events they claim took place. Celsus evokes parallels from Greek religion and mythology to show that the stories about Jesus are not unique. Many of the things that луеге said about him were said about other gods and heroic figures in Greek history. Resurrection from the dead, one of the points

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that Christians vigorously insisted on, had been attributed to other divine figures in the ancient world. He also makes the further suggestion that the stories of Jesus' resurrection can be explained by dreams or hallucinations. What his followers said is not a report of what actually happened but what in their enthusiasm and ecstasy over their leader they wished had happened. This wish became the basis of the later claim that Jesus was a divine figure and not an ordinary mortal. Celsus's concern with historical verification, like other points discussed in this chapter, helps one understand not only the nature of the conflict between Christianity and pagan intellectuals, but also gives us insight into the developing character of the Christian tradition. As is clear from Origen's response, the questions of whether the gospel accounts of Jesus are reliable, and whether Christian theological claims are based on the kind of person Jesus was and the life he lived, were matters of great import for Christian thinkers. As late as the early fifth century, Christian thinkers were still troubled about the trustworthiness of the gospel accounts of Jesus, as the discussion of Augustine's book Harmony of the Gospels (in chapter 6) will show. The question of the mythological and legendary character of the Gospels did not first arise in modern times. The historical reliability of the accounts of Jesus' life was already an issue for Christian thinkers in the second century. AN APOSTASY FROM JUDAISM The Roman historian Suetonius had identified Jesus as an instigator among the Jews (Claudius 25) and Galen had discussed common points of agreement between Jewish and Christian doctrines. Anyone who knew anything about Christianity knew that the movement had begun in Palestine among the Jews and that Christians appealed to Jewish writings, specifically the Jewish Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament). But not until Celsus had a pagan critic seen the significance of the relation between Christianity and Judaism for criticizing the Christian movement. Some people knew that "Christians and Jews quarrel with each other" (c. Cels. 3.1), but Celsus's observations on

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Christianity and Judaism cut deeper than that. He charged that Christians deserted the Jewish Law even though Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was a Jew and Christians claimed to be faithful to the Jewish heritage. Celsus puts this criticism into the mouth of a Jewish interlocutor. 'Why do you [Christians] take your origin from our religion [Judaism], and then, as if you are progressing in knowledge, despise these things, although you cannot name any other origin for your doctrine than our law" (c. Cels. 2.4)? To understand the force of this criticism one must recall that Judaism was a thriving religious movement within the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. The Christian movement had to make its way alongside of, and sometimes in opposition to, well-established Jewish communities, many of which had existed for centuries in the cities of the Roman Empire. This fact is seldom appreciated in the writing of the history of this period. In the conventional account of early Christianity, the Jews played a major role before the beginning of Christianity and during the first generations of it. All serious study of the New Testament, for example, begins with an examination of the Jewish background of Christianity. However, due to the Christian interpretation of history that dates the beginning of a new era from the birth of Christ (and hence divides all history, sacred and secular, into A.D., "in the year of our Lord," and B.c., "before Christ"), it appears that after the rise of Christianity the Jews became peripheral to the main story, the emergence and establishment of the Christian church.9 The Jews were a significant minority within the Roman Empire, numbering four to six million people out of a population of approximately sixty million. In the provinces where Christianity first established itself—Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor—the Jews comprised a larger percentage of the populace. Although the Jews in Palestine suffered because of the war with the Romans in 69-70 C.E. and the uprising in Cyrene and Egypt in 115-17 C.E., as well as the Bar Kochba revolt in 132-35 C.E. which caused many casualties, the overall number of Jews did not decrease dramatically. The events in 9. See Robert L. Wilken,/o/w Chrysostom and the Jews (Berkeley, 1983), especially chapter 2.

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Palestine had little impact on the actual life of the Jewish communities in other provinces, and even in Palestine, by the second century Jewish life was prospering. In many cities in this period, Palestine as well as elsewhere, Jews served on the city councils; some held posts in the Roman provincial administration; and Jews actively participated in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the cities. In this milieu, where Christianity was a tiny unknown movement that had only recently originated and was only beginning to come to the attention of people, it perplexed pagans that Christians claimed to be inheritors of the Jewish tradition while at the same time rejecting the Jewish community and its customs and laws. It is obvious that Jews were justified in criticizing Christians for deserting the Jewish tradition yet claiming to be faithful to Jewish origins. In his Dialogue with Tryphoy a debate between a Christian and a Jew, Justin Martyr quotes the Jew Trypho as follows: "But you [Christians] openly despising this covenant, neglect the [laws] which follow from it, and you attempt to persuade yourselves that you know God, even though you perform none of those things that those [Jews] who fear God do" (Dial. 10). But that such criticism would come from a pagan critic is another matter, especially when one considers that Celsus is also critical of the Jews: 'The Jews were Egyptian by race, and left Egypt after revolting against the Egyptian community and despising the religious customs of Egypt" (c. Cels. 3.5). Celsus knew that the truth of the Christian teaching depended on Christianity's relation to Judaism, because Christians claimed to be the rightful inheritors of the Jewish tradition. Justin, for example, said that he was converted to Christianity by reading the prophetic writings of the Jews (Dial. 7). The actual practice of the Christians, however, ignored Jewish customs, and the continuing existence of Jewish communities that kept the ancient Jewish traditions called into question Christian assertions. By continuing to observe the Jewish Law— circumcision, the food laws, celebration of Jewish festivals—the Jews preserved continuity with earlier Jewish tradition and showed they were faithful to the laws of Moses. The Christians, on the other hand, who claimed to be inheritors of this tradition, observed none of the

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Jewish laws. Hence Celsus has his Jewish interlocutor ask: "What was wrong with you [Christians] that you left the law of our fathers, and being deluded by that man [Jesus] whom we were addressing just now, were quite ludicrously deceived and have deserted us for another name and another life:155 (c. Cels. 2.1). Had there not been visible Jewish communities in the cities of the empire, the contention that Christianity had apostasized from Judaism would have been unpersuasive, even unintelligible. In such a situation Christians could have claimed that they were indeed the rightful inheritors of the Jewish tradition. Who would gainsay their claims? But the existence of another religious group, and one that was well known and well established in the cities, made the Christian assertion implausible in the extreme. Why, asks Celsus, did God "give contradictory laws to this man from Nazareth, his son55? Jesus taught many different things than Moses taught. "Who is wrong? Moses or Jesus? Or when the Father sent Jesus had he forgotten what commands he gave to Moses? Or did he condemn his own laws and change his mind, and send his messenger for quite the opposite purposes55 (7.18)? Celsus also knew that the Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah,

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God's emissaries and helpers in ruling the world. Accordingly, it was proper to worship these lesser gods and the one high God as long as one did not make one of these emissaries—Jesus, for example—the sole object of worship to the exclusion of the high God and his other emissaries. A king rules over others like himself. Like a king who rules over fellow humans, not animals, God, the monarch of all, rules over other gods. "The man who worships several gods, because he worships some one of those which belong to the great God, even by this very action does that which is loved by him" (c. Cels. 8.2). Gelsus was ready to acknowledge Jesus as divine if Christians could bring forth sufficient proof that he deserved such honor. His own view was that Jesus did not deserve it because he accomplished his wonders through magic and sorcery. The Christians, however, made even more extravagant claims: they said that Jesus was unique among the gods and that he should be worshipped to the exclusion of all other gods. To Celsus such excessive adoration set up Jesus as a rival to God and undercut the worship of the one God. "If these men [Christians] worshipped no other God but «one, perhaps they would have had a valid argument against others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently, and yet think it is not inconsistent with belief in god if they also worship his servant" (c. Cels, 8.12). Christians created a revolutionary society whose object was not the worship of God, nor of the daimones, God's emissaries, but of a "corpse" (c. Cels. 7.68). That they refused to frequent the temples, to venerate images and statues, and to participate in the public religious rites was a sign that they were an "obscure and secret society" (с. СЖ8.17). I Celsus was convinced that if an association of this sort attracted too many adherents it could disrupt the cohesion and stability of society. The Christian movement was beginning to create a "counterculture" that shifted people's loyalties and drained their energies away from the larger society. At the time Celsus was writing it is unlikely that Christians were numerous enough to offer such a threat, but Celsus was uneasy with the social implications of the Christian movement. For who;ever makes the god or gods of one's own association equal to the God

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of all, thereby robbing the one God of his proper devotion, throws into fundamental question the established order. In the most profound sense, then, .the Christian movement appeared seditious. By transgressing tilt Nomos (structure or law) of Judaism, the tradition from which it sprang,- Christianity exposed Hellenism to acute peril. For the revolt against Judaism injected a poison into the society that would eventually destroy the traditions of Hellenism. Christianity "encourages the dissolution of the religious Nomos. The cause of its destructive influence .lies finally in its^unfaithmlness to that historical inheritance with which the various people have been entrusted in their Nomos"™ , '.;'.γ, .: .;.. , ;, . Nomos in Celsus's vocabulary refers.to the accumulated wisdom and practices of a particular culture. Disregard for tradition could only lead to error and social :anarchy. Gelsus's arguments against Christianity have two faces. Ori^the one hand, he offers logical and philosophical reasons why Christian beliefs-cannot be accepted. Many of these arguments have a timeless character. The argument that God cannot do the impossible would fall into this category. On the other hand, he offers another line of criticism, linked to his view of Nomos, and peculiar to his own time and culture. He believed that truth and antiquity were one and that what was handed downiby the ancients was true be-. cause it was old. "It was because men of ancient times were touched by the spirit that they proclaimed many excellent doctrines." Christians ignored these sages and set forth; supposedly new and better ч teachings, ^ Who were these sages? Most were nameless men of hoary antiquity whose wisdom could be learned from the moral maxims, the customs, the inherited ^beliefs, and the religious practices that were to be found among the various peoples who inhabited the Roman world. The authority of these teachings and customs derived from their antiquity. The "true doctrine" (alethes-loffos) was identified with the "ancient doctrine" (pelaios-logos]. One of these venerable sages was Plato. In an extended discussion of Plato's »Gnio, a dialogue dealing with the prob10. Andreseri, Xö0w und Nomos, 223-24.

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lern of justice, Celsus shows that the Christian injunction to turn the other cheek when struck (Luke 6:29) is an imitation of a teaching already found in Plato. 'They [the Christians] have a precept to this effect—that you must not resist a man who insults you. Even . . . if someone strikes you on the cheek, yet you should offer the other one as well. This too is old stuff, and was better said before them. But they expressed it in more vulgar terms" (c. Cels. 7.58). Then he cites the Crito to show that Plato taught that even if one suffers harm one should not do harm in return. The views of Plato, however, were "set forth still earlier by divinely inspired men" (7.58). Elsewhere he charges Christians with misunderstanding the teachings of the ancients (c. Cels. 6.15). Celsus's appeal to the wisdom of the ancients was directed against the kinds of claims Christians were making to defend their teachings. The early apologists appealed to the prophets of the Jews to substantiate Christian teaching (Justin Martyr Apol. 1.30-52). Moses was thought to have lived earlier than the ancient Greek sages (Apol. 1.54). Even before the rise of Christianity Jews had argued for the truth of their tradition by showing its antiquity. Josephus, the Jewish historian and apologist, entitled one of his works the Antiquities of the Jews. But there was a deeper reason why Celsus appealed to the wisdom of antiquity. Unlike our culture, which seems to thrive on the new and up-to-date, Greco-Roman society revered the past. The older something was, the better it was thought to be. This was especially true in matters of religion, because the men and women of earlier times, especially those who lived very long ago, were thought to have been closer to the gods. In his Laws, a work dealing with the customs and traditions of Rome, Cicero writes: 'The preservation of the rites of the family and of our ancestors means preserving the religious rites which, we can almost say, were handed down to us by the gods themselves, since ancient times were closest to the gods" (Leg. 2.10.27). Cicero was simply echoing the words of Plato: 'The ancients are better than we for they dwelled nearer to the gods" (Phil. 16c). Tradition was the test of truth. In this sense, Celsus is a profoundly conservative thinker. 'There is

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an ancient doctrine (logos) which has existed from the beginning that has always been maintained by the wisest nations and cities and. wise men," Among the nations he mentions the Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Ödrysians, Samothracians, and Eleusinians. Yet Celsus was not authoritarian or dogmatic. He was intelligent enough to know that the beliefs and practices of these varied peoples were dissimilar and could not be reduced to one ancient teaching (c. Cels. 1.14). Though he appeals to a teaching or logos which had been expressed by the sages of old, this teaching has little specific content, nor does it take the same form in every "nation." In another sense, Celsus is extremely "relativistic," a point which Origen saw and roundly attacked (c. Cels. 5.27). His appeal is less to a specific "doctrine" than it is to established ways whatever these may be. One should observe the "laws" of the various nations, he writes, "because it is necessary to preserve the established social conventions" and because the various nations were handed over by God to different overseers who established differing practices. As long as one observes the traditional ways, the "overseers" will be pleased. "It is impious to abandon the customs which have existed in each locality from the beginning" (c. Cels. 5.26). Celsus can praise the Jews even though he despises their particular customs. The Jews became an individual nation, he says, and "made laws according to the custom of their country; and they maintain these laws among themselves at the present day, and observe a worship which may be very peculiar but is at least traditional. In this respect they behave like the rest of mankind, because each nation follows its traditional customs, whatever kind may happen to be established" (c. Cels. 5.25). Because they have maintained their customs over the centuries up to the present time, the Jews have a claim on the ancient and true doctrines. But Christians can make no such claim, for their sect came into existence only recently; hence the force of the charge that Christians are apostates. Their attempt to appeal to the antiquity of the Jews is easily refuted. Christians can only point to a shallow and inconsequential past going back a little over a hundred years. If I ask them "where they have come from or who is the author of their traditional laws," they will say: "Nobody. In fact they themselves

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originated from Judaism, and they cannot name any other source for their teacher and chorus-leader. Nevertheless they rebelled against the Jews" (c. Celt. 5.33). Celsus's standard, then, for judging the Christian movement was custom and tradition, or to use his term, the Nomos which had been handed down from antiquity. He does not defend a particular set of religious beliefs. Indeed, he is quite willing to tolerate wide diversity in practice as long as the practices are traditional. There is nothing wrong if each people observes its own laws of worship. Actually we will find that the difference between each nation is very considerable and nevertheless each one of them appears to think its own by far the best. The Ethiopians who live at Meroe worship only Zeus and Dionysus. The Arabians worship only Ourania and Dionysus. The Egyptians all worship Osiris and Isis. . . . Some abstain from sheep, reverencing them as sacred, others from goats, others from crocodiles." [c. Cek. 5.35] There is another dimension to this exchange between Celsus and the Christians. It is not simply a debate between paganism and Christianity, but a debate about a new concept of religion. Celsus sensed that Christians had severed the traditional bond between religion and a "nation" or people. The ancients took for granted that religion was indissolubly linked to a particular city or people. Indeed, there was no term for religion in the sense we now use it to refer to the beliefs and practices of a specific group of people or of a voluntary association divorced from ethnic or national identity. The term "could speak of a particular system of rites (a cult or an initiation), or a particular set of beliefs (doctrines or opinions), or a legal code, or a body of national customs and traditions; but for the peculiar synthesis of all those which we call a 'religion' the one Hellenistic word which came the closest was 'philosophy.'"11 The idea of an association of people bound together by a religious allegiance with its own traditions and beliefs, its own history, and its own way of life independent of a par11. Morton Smith, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century," in Moshe Davis, Israel: Its Role in Civilization (New York, 1956), 79.

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ticular city or nation was foreign to the ancients. Religion belonged to a peoplej and it was bestowed on an individual by the people or nation from which one came or in which .one lived. "Piety lay in a calm performance of traditional rites and in a faithful observance of traditional standards."12 Celsus opposed the "sectarian" tendencies at work in the Christian movement because he saw in Christianity a "privatizing" of religion, the trarisferral of religious values from the public sphere to a private association/Christians not only refused military service but they would not accept public office nor assume any responsibility for the governing of the cities. It was, however, not simply "that Christians subverted the cities by refusing to participate in civic life, but that they undermined the foundations of the societies in which they lived. By elevating the founder of their society to divine status, uiey set up a rival to the one high God who watched over the empire. If you overthrow the teaching that there is one king,\says Celsus, there is "nothing to prevent the emperor from being abandoned, alone and deserted, while earthly things would come into the power of the most lawless and savage barbarians" (c. Cels. 8.68).

12. A. D. Nock- Conversion (Oxford, 1933), 18.

VI PORPHYRY: THE MOST LEARNED CRITIC OF ALL

O

F ALL THE CRITICS OF CHRISTIANITY IN ANTIQUITY, Porphyry, the biographer of the great Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus and editor of his Enneads^ was the most learned and astute. Though Plotinus towers over Porphyry in the history of philosophy, Porphyry was a man of genuine intellectual stature, whose broad learning and philosophical acumen made him a formidable foe indeed. Celsus's work against the Christians merited the response of one apologist, Origen, but Porphyry's writings claimed the attention of several generations of Christian intellectuals, among whom were Eusebius, the church historian; Methodius, an early proponent of virginity; Apollinarius, an innovative theologian from Syria; Jerome the biblical scholar; and Augustine, who was still wrestling with Porphyry's arguments against Christianity late in life, when he wrote the City of God. Even the emperor Constantine sought to still Porphyry's voice, not by composing another treatise against him, but by putting his writings to the torch, a precedent that was followed a century later by another emperor, Theodosius II, in 448 C.E. "The vigor, scope and sheer size of [Porphyry's] attack must have stunned the Christian communities," wrote Robert Grant.1 Although Porphyry's critics were many, they have unfortunately preserved for us little of his work, and what fragments are extant are scattered through a half-dozen authors, often with no sure indication that they derive from Porphyry himself. Consequently, we are uncer1. Robert M. Grant, "Porphyry among the Early Christians," m Romanitas et Christianitas, ed. W. den Boer et al. (Amsterdam, 1973), 182. 126

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tain not only about what he actually wrote, but in what form, and whether he wrote one book or several against the Christian /move-.' ment. What we do know is that his attack on Christianity made a deep impression on Christians; that it drew on wide learning in history, philosophy, religion, chronography, and literary'criticism; and that it subjected both Jewish anci Christian Scriptures to thorough and detailed criticism. Augustine, no mean scholar, called him the "most learned of philosophers,'', and even Eusebius, himself a polymath, was: intimidated by Porphyry, It'was hard for Christian intellectuals to be comfortable with in opponent who knew the Bible almost as well as they knewit themselves., Oelsus wrote at a time when little was known about the Christian ; movement, when Christianity was a small sect gaming public attention for the first time. By the time; Porphyry wrote, in the second half of the third century, Christianity had become a significant force within the Roman Empire. Indeed, it is likely that its growing influence among the educated and its broad appeal to the lower classes not only prompted Porphyry to write against Christianity but also »suggested to him* the approach he would take. Celsus had certainly taken Christianity-seriously, but he believed that its baneful influence could be retarded ifits claims were shown tq^b| false. Porphyry had no such illusion; he sensed that Christianity: was here to stay and he sought, within'the framework of the religious traditions of the Roman Empire, to find ä way of accommodating the hew creed. This is why he was so threatening to the Christians oFantiquity and is so fascinating to' us. We know the-figure of Celsus only through his opposition to Christianity, But Porphyry was much inoré than a critic of Christianity. He was a philosopher in his own right trying to preserve the intellectual tradition of Greek ¿antiquity and a religious thinker who sought to reconcile the religious heritage of the GrecorRoman world with philosophical reason.. He defended, for example, the religious value of the traditional practice of animal sacrifice. His philosophical writings, particularly his,wprk pn Aristotle, have had'a continuing influence on Western philosophy since the time of Boethius. In the medieval curric-

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ulum his introduction to and commentary on Aristotle's Categmae (Isagoge) became the first treatise a student of philosophy was asked to master. He belonged to an intellectual tradition, Platonism, that was very much alive in the third century, yet he was a man of traditional piety. In a letter addressed to his wife, whom he married in his old age, he wrote, ccThe greatest fruit of piety is to worship God according to the tradition of one's fathers" (Marc. 18). In contrast to Plotinus, whose piety was intellectual and spiritual, Porphyry found a place in his thinking for ritual, animal sacrifices, and the public ceremonies in the cities. He recognized the importance of religion for philosophy. "Neoplatonism grew up not only as an academic institution of the Empire, but as a spiritual movement in an age of religions. . . . What is new is the attitude of academic philosophers to religion. From having viewed religion with varying degrees of respect as morally valuable, Platonists came to accept it as aspiring to the same end as philosophy."2 IN DEFENSE OF PLATO Porphyry was born and raised in the city of Tyre in Phoenicia on the Mediterranean coast north of Palestine. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it was probably 233 C.E. His father's name was Malchos, the Syriac word for king, and from it came the Greek name Porphyrios, the term for purple, the traditional color of royalty. That his family had any royal blood is doubtful, but his parents were sufficiently well off to provide him with a thorough education, which meant a rhetorical and literary one. Though his native language was Syriac, Tyre was a Hellenized city and all of Porphyry's education was in Greek. It was possible he knew some Hebrew, and he devoted a good part of his attack on Christianity to the Jewish Scriptures, but nowhere does he show that he knew the language. Tyre, a trading and commercial center situated at a strategic point on the eastern Mediterranean, was a meeting point of East and West. 2. A. D. Lloyd, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967), p. 277.

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It boasted a splendid harbor and a large purple-dyeing industry. Some of its citizens maintained permanent residences in Rome and Puteoli (present-day Pozzuoli) for business purposes. Situated where it was, Tyre attracted and nurtured diverse religions, and here Porphyry had his first experience with the variety of religious practices in the ancient world and developed his tolerance for differing religious beliefs. It was also in Tyre that he had his first contact with Christianity and Judaism, and it is possible that his interpretation of the Jewish Book of Daniel, which played a role in his polemic against the Christians and caused later Christian commentators much anguish, was learned in Tyre.3 As a young man Porphyry traveled from Tyre down the Mediterranean coast to Caesarea to hear the Christian thinker, Origen, lecture. At the time, Origen, the most original intellect Christianity had produced during its first two centuries, was at the height of his powers and had recently produced his massive defense of Christianity to the pagans, his Contra Celsum. Porphyry, however, was not impressed by Origen. He was put off by the "absurdity" of Origen's efforts to reconcile the Greek intellectual tradition with the new religion that had arisen in Palestine. Comparing Origen to another contemporary Greek philosopher, Ammonius, Porphyry said: Ammonius was a Christian brought up in Christian ways by his parents, but when he began to think philosophically he promptly changed to a law-abiding way of life. Origen on the other hand, a Greek schooled in Greek thought, plunged headlong into unGreek recklessness; immersed in this, he peddled himself and his skill in argument. In his way of life he behaved like a Christian, defying the law; in his metaphysical and theological ideas he played the Greek, giving a Greek twist to foreign tales. [Eusebius, Hist.Eccl. 6.19] Because of Porphyry's acquaintance with Origen, some Christians later thought that he had once been a Christian who had apostasized 3. P. M. Casey, "Porphyry and the Origin of the Book of Daniel," Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 27 (1976): 15-33.

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to Hellenism.' This is most unlikely, but it is easy to see how such an idea could arise. To Christians it was inconceivable that a man of Porphyry's stature would not have fallen under the spell of Origen's powerful mind and ascetic spirituality, especially a man who himself was an ascetic. Nevertheless, even the great Origen could not work his magic on Porphyry. His initial contact with a Christian intellectual had large consequences, however, because from Origen Porphyry learned the importance of the Bible to Christian thinking, and he may even have learned the art of biblical criticism from him. Robert Grant writes: When he [Porphyry] encountered the Stromateis [a book on exegetical difficulties] of Origen, with their criticism of the Bible and their subsequent allegorizations, he presumably found that a good deal of his anti-Christian tasks had been done for him. All he had to do was accept Origen's negative statements (although in many instances he went further along this line) and reject the deeper spiritual meanings which Origen sought to find. In this regard the critical work of Origen provided a praepamtio Neoplatónica for the work of Porphyry.4 Porphyry was to make the Bible more central to his attack on Christianity than any critic before or after him. Porphyry's education, like that of other privileged men of his day, was chiefly rhetorical and literary. In many respects it was similar, to the education received by Pliny, except that its vehicle was Greek rather than Latin and the writers he studied were Homer, Euripides, Menander, and Demosthenes, not Virgil, Terence, Sallust, and Cicero. Porphyry, however, did not seek a career in law or in the civil service. Instead, he left Tyre for Athens to study philosophy. In the third century Athens was still a major intellectual center, and there he met his first master, Longinus, by profession a philosopher and rhetorician, but by inclination and temperament a literary critic and pedant. Porphyry's biographer, Eunapius, called Longinus a "living library and a walking Museion" (VS 456); Plotinus said he was a "scholar but cer4. Robert M. Grant, 'The Stromateis of Origen," in Epektasis. Melanges patñstiques cfferts ли Cardinal Jean Daniéhu (Paris, 1972), 292.

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tainly not a philosopher" (VitaPlotini 14). In Athens Porphyry studied philosophy, but his chief preoccupation seems to have been philology and literary criticism, : A glimpse of the concerns o>£ Longinus's school can be found in a passage from Porphyry describing the .way the school celebrated Plato's birthday. It was .the custom among philosophical schools to commemorate the founder by a banquet followed by conversation, and on this particular occasion the topic was plagiarism. With much erudition, the members of the school tried to outdo each other by citing even more obscure authors or showing how even the best and most respected writers had plagiarized sections of their writings. Castráis, one of the members of the group, began by showing that Ephorus borrowed as many as three thousand lines from other writers, to which Apollonius replied that, in his history of Philip, Theopompus copied word for word from the Areopagiticus of Isocrates. After debating this point, Apollonius said that even the great Menander was guilty of the same fault, though people have generally overlooked it, but Latinus exposed his borrowings in a work known only to a few. And: so'the discussion continued—salon talk, after-dinner conversation, the idle, moments of the overeducated. Porphyry thrived in this setting, and through this door he entered the great world of Greek thought. From Longinus he also learned the tools and the skills to deal critically with literary and historical works—skills that would make him one of the most learned and respected men of his Vage. Under Longinus's influence Porphyry published· his first books. One of these, the Homeric Questions, was a textual and literary analysis of the Homeric poems. He discussed difficulties with the text, summarizing the views of earlier scholars and proffering his own solutions. He analyzed the etymology and meaning of words, discussed gram'matical problems and historical allusions. What is absent from the work is any interest in philosophical questions or any concern with the allegorical meaning of the text. In a later work,' however, De Antro Nympharum (Cave of the Nymphs) Porphyry showed that he was quite familiar with the tradition of allegorical interpretation. In this work, an interpretation of the Gave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey (13.10212), Porphyry argues that the poet is speaking of "higher things." The

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Cave of the Nymphs is a symbol of the cosmos and the dwelling place for the soul. After spending some years under Longinus's tutelage, Porphyry grew restless. Plotinus's fame had reached the East and Porphyry decided to move to Rome and study with him. Longinus was disappointed that Porphyry would seek a new master, but Porphyry had learned all he could from Longinus. The encounter with Plotinus was to change his intellectual direction as well as the course of his life. For the rest of his life Porphyry lived in Rome, studying Plotinus's ideas and eventually taking over the responsibility of transcribing his lectures and editing his writings. When he moved to Rome in 262-63 C.E., Porphyry was thirty years old and Plotinus was fifty-nine. Porphyry lived in Rome for forty years. After the superficial aestheticism of Longinus, Plotinus opened up new philosophical and spiritual horizons. To become an adherent of Plotinus's school required a break with the world. Philosophy, as we saw in the chapter on Galen, was not simply an intellectual pursuit; it demanded a change of life, a moral commitment to a new and higher way. Porphyry describes the change in the life of a well-known senator who joined the school. There was also Rogatianus, a senator, who advanced so far in renunciation of public life that he gave up all his property, dismissed all his servants, and resigned his rank. When he was on the point of appearing in public as praetor and the lictors were already therev he refused to appear to have any thing to do with the office. He would not even keep his own house to live in, but went the round of his friends and acquaintances, dining at one house and sleeping at another (but he only ate every other day). As a result of this renunciation and indifference to the needs of life, though he had been so gouty that he had to be carried in a chair, he regained his health, and, though he had not been able to stretch out his hands, he became able to use them much more easily than professional handicraftsmen. Plotinus regarded him with great favor and praised him highly and frequently held

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him up as an example to; all who practiced philosophy. [Vita Plotini?} ; .) In this environment Porphyry blossomed and soon came to be Plo-. tinus's favorite student. Once, when he read a.poem on Plato's birthday, expounding his "mystic doctrine," some of Plotinus's disciples said he "had gone mad," but Plotinus praised him. "You have shown yourself at once poet, philosopher and hierophant"(VitaPíqtini 15). . Though it is difficult to date many of Porphyry's writings because they are philosophical treatises unrelated to the course of external/ events, it is assumed that his commentaries on philosophical works come from the years after he came to Rome. He wrote,, as already noted, :a commentary on Aristotle's logic, but he also wrote commentaries on other works of Aristotle, for example, the Physics and the section in the Metaphysics dealing with the Platonic theory of ideas, as well as works on Plato and other earlier philosophers. Few of these works are extant, but they do give an important clue to the interest of the Plotinian, school. Plotinus considered himself an exponent of'the classical philosophical tradition, particularly Plato, and he took upon himself the responsibility of examining this tradition critically and .presenting it in-its most compelling and persuasive form. Consequently, one of the tasks of this school was to show how others had corrupted the Platonic tradition and departed from its teachings. Plotinus and his students produced treatises defending the ancient philosophy which had been abandoned by Christians and Others (Vita Plotini 16). Among Plotinus's extant writings is an essay against the Gnostics. . , , The years with Plotinus were emotionally exhausting as well as intellectually productive for Porphyry. Sometime in his mid-thirties he began to experience a growing depression that forced him to give up his work. The depression,was so severe that he contemplated suicide (Plot. 11). However, Plotinus stepped in, gave him sound counsel, and, according to Porphyry's account, showed him the irrationality of taking his own life. Instead, Plotinus recommended that he go on an extended trip. Taking the advice, he set sail for Sicily, where he re-

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mained for several years. During his stay there, he was restored to health and he began to write once again. Unfortunately, however, Plotinus died during Porphyry's absence. When Longinus heard of Plotinus's death, he encouraged Porphyry to come back to Syria where he was now living, but Porphyry decided to return to Rome. Porphyry died early in the fourth century, perhaps as late as 305 c.E. We know few details of his life after his return to Rome until his death, but it seems likely that during this period he devoted a good deal of his time to putting together an edition of Plotinus's writings. Plotinus had written little until he was fifty years old, and what he produced after that was chiefly a series of philosophical essays on beauty, the immortality of the soul, destiny, the good or the one, virtue, and so on, designed for circulation among his students. These essays were collected by Porphyry and arranged according to topics in sixEnneads, or groups of nine. From this long period in Porphyry's life we know of only two events, but both are interesting. The one was his marriage to Marcella, a widow with seven children, when he was almost seventy years old. Porphyry had never married, and he is somewhat apologetic that he eventually did, especially in light of his ascetic life. Asceticism was thought to promote a genuinely philosophical life. In a long letter to his wife, Porphyry defended his decision to marry, reminding Marcella that they were not marrying to have children: their union would only produce those who could be reared in the "correct philosophy." His letter is filled with moral exhortation, and many of the maxims he cites were also used by Christians. More than anything else he wrote, this letter shows that Porphyry and his Christian opponents shared many moral and religious values. In this same letter to Marcella, Porphyry also mentions that he had undertaken the trip—it was a genuine letter not a literary fiction— because of a "need of the Greeks" (Marc. 4). Neither Porphyry's destination nor the purpose of the trip is stated, and the phrase "need of the Greeks" has puzzled scholars. The trip occurred just at the time when Diocletian was initiating a new persecution against the Chris-

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tians. Henry Chadwick has made the intriguing suggestion that Porphyry had been requested by the emperor to prepare a defense of the traditional religion which could be used as a justification for repressing Christianity. The Christian writer Lactántius said that at this time a man living in Constantinople, the capital of the empire, whom he calls the "priest of philosophy" (Div. Inst. 5.2) had written a work against the Christians. The phrase "priest of philosophy" fits Porphyry, and it is possible that his trip because of a "need of the Greeks" was undertaken in order to prepare a frontal attack on the Christian movement.5 In the twentieth century, scholars have disputed the form and content of Porphyry's writings against the Christians. That he wrote against Christianity is without doubt; many later writers testify to his work, and a number of these wrote refutations of it. The response of Apollinarius included thirty books. Consideration of Porphyry as a critic of Christianity has focused almost entirely on a work entitled Against the Christians., though this title.is first mentioned only ca. 1000 C.E. and is not used by Porphyry's critics in the fourth and fifth centuries. Most scholars, however have assumed that such a work did exist and they have attempted, on the basis of citations of Porphyry from later writers, to reconstruct its content and structure, But every effort to reconstruct the work founders because the number of genuine fragments is very small. Early in the century Adolf von Harnack published those which were thought to be from Porphyry, and this collection, which included ninety-seven fragments, has usually served as the basis for any discussion of Porphyry's anti-Christian work. Yet fully half of the fragments which allegedly come from Against the Christians were taken from a relatively obscure work, the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, a fourth-century Christian apologist. It is thought that Macarius excerpted his material from Porphyry, but he does not say this, and there is no way to establish that what he presents is actually drawn from this source. Ten years ago the historian Timothy 5. Henry Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus, Texts and Studies, 5 (Cambridge, 1959), 66.

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Barnes showed that the Macarían fragments could not, with confidence, be/used to reconstruct/Porphyry's lost work.6 Without them, however, our knowledge of Against the Christians is extremely sketchy. Another (dimension of Porphyry's attack on Christianity can be found in his lost work, Philosophy from Oracles. From this work we do have a number of genuine fragments, and on the basis of these we can construct a rough outline of the book. Furthermore, this book is cited by name by Christian authors, and it is clear from^references to it that it was considered by Christians to be an anti-Christian work. Nevertheless, it has seldom been used to understand and assess Porphyry's case against Christianity, It is possible that this was the work written by Porphyry late in life at the request of the emperor.7 The work mentioned by Lactantius and authored by the "priest of philosophy" had three books, and so did the Philosophy from Oracles. The Philosophy from Oracles is not a work on Christianity as such, but a .positive statement of the traditional religion of the Roman world. Porphyry presents ah elaborate discussion of the theology of the various ancient peoples—-Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chaldeans, even the Hebrews—to show that, these ancient beliefs were similar to the philosophical religion accepted by many educated people in the third century. He does this by showing that the "oracles" of the traditional religions could be used as a source for belief in the One Supreme Being; His strategy was to provide a way to incorporate Christianity, which, also claimed to believe in the one high God, into the religious framework of the Roman world. ... . , In the discussion of Porphyry's attack on Christianity which fol6. T. D. Barries, "Porphyry against the Christians: Date and the Attribution of Fragments," Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 24 (1973): 424-42. For a more positive assessment of the value of Macarius for establishing the content of Porphyry's criticism of Christianity, see Robert Waelkens, UEconomie, theme, apologétique-etprincipe herméneuitique dans l'Apocriticos Ae Macanos Maznes, Recueil de Travaux d'Histoire et de Philologie, Université de Louvain, ser. 6, no. 4 (Louvain, 1974). I have used Macarius only when his reports are confirmed by other sources. 7. For the interpretation of Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles presented here, see Robert L. Wilken, "Pagan Criticism of Christianity: Greek Religion and Christian Faith," in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition,, ed. W. R. Schoedel and R. L. WilMen (Paris, 1979), 117-34.

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lows, I.will draw both on the fragments that may come from.the work usually known as Against the Christians as well as from his Philosophy from Oracles. In -the main, the material from Against the Christians deals with exegetical questions and literary problems in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, whereas the material from the Philosophy from Orocles^ deals with the figure of Jesus, belief in the one God, and the apostasy of Christianity from the traditional religion. THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES On the basis of the fragments remaining from Against the Christians, we know that Porphyry devoted a major part of his book to the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament.8 A fifth-century Christian apologist who knew Porphyry's work said that he "spent much , time with them" (lie., the writings of Moses and the Prophets) in his "writing against us" (Thepdpret of Cyrus, Affect, 7.36), and Eusebius said that what incensed Porphyry about Origen was that he used allegory to "explain away" the difficulties in the Jewish Scriptures (Hist, . Eccl. 6.19.2). However, except for two fragments dealing with the , historical problem of the date of Moses (the question is whether the Hebrew religion was older than other religions), all of the extant fragments from Porphyry's criticism of the Jewish Scriptures deal with the Book of Daniel. In itself this is significant because earlier critics had not discussed this book. Celsus mentioned the story of Daniel in the UOL'S den, but he was interested only in the heroic figure of Daniel, who was often pictured in early Christian art, not in-the book itself. \ By the time Porphyry wrote, however, the Book of Daniel had begun to play'a major role in attempts to articulate a Christian view of history. Porphyry responded directly to this new development by arguing that Daniel could not be read as a prophecy of the future, as , 8. For a general discussion of Porphyry's Against the Christians)tsee Anthony Meredith, "Porphyry and Julian against the Christians," in Aufitieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin, 1980), 23.2: 1119-49. Fragments from Porphyry's work in Adolf von Harnack, Porphyrius Gegen die Christen, 15 Bücher, Zeugnisse und Referate, Abhandlungen der koen. preuss. Akademie d. Wissenschaft, phil,-hist. Klasse l (Berlin, 1916).

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Christians were inclined to interpret it, but as a history of events in the author's own time. What Porphyry wrote about Daniel was so revolutionary, and so disturbing to Christian interpreters, that his critics sought to refute him in detail and at length. 'The position of the-neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry in this debate has been remarkable. Centuries before the advent of modern biblical criticism, Porphyry already knew that the book of Daniel was a Maccabean pseudepi9 graph." Eusebius devoted three books to Daniel in his work in response to Porphyry, Methodius gave it close attention, and Apollinarius allowed it one large book. After all these scholars had written their responses, Jerome wrote an entire commentary on the Book of Daniel in defense of the traditional Christian interpretation. He mentions Porphyry's work on the first page and cites him at length in the commentary, responding verse by verse to his interpretation. Indeed, it is Jerome's commentary that is our chief source for Porphyry's interpretation of Daniel, Why should Porphyry devote such attention to the Book of Daniel and vwhy should his views cause such consternation among Christian thinkers? Daniel is a book of legends about a faithful Jew and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Дbednego, who were captives when the Jews were in exile in the sixth century B.C.E. under the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. The first six chapters of the book comprise stories about Daniel and his dealings with the king; the remaining six chapters are made up of Daniel's visions about the ultimate vindication of the saints of God over the king and rulers of the world. The book presents the stories about Daniel and his friends as taking place in the sixth century, and the visions as prophecies of what was to happen in the future and at the end of time. Daniel became popular among early Christians because it was a collection of dramatic stories about deliverance from the persecution of a wicked ruler. The scenes of Daniel in the lion's den and of the three young men in the fiery furnace were among the earliest, and most frequent, representations of biblical stories to appear on the walls of early Christian catacombs. 9. Casey, 15.

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The Book of Daniel was seen^as a fertile source of prophecies about the coming of Christ and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, a topic which assumed a major role in early Christian views4 of history, as we shall see more fully when discussing Julian in the following chapter. From the beginning of the Christian movement the.appeal·to prophecy was used to legitimate Christian claims about Jesus to Jews. When Christianity moved out of the Jewish context to present its case ,. to the educated men and women of the Roman, Empire, its apologists continued to rely on an appeal to prophecy, Justin Martyr wrote; "But lest someone should argue against us, What excludes the supposition that this person whom you call-Christ/was^ a man,,of human origin, and did: these miracles you speak of by magic arts, arid so appeared to be God's son?' We will bring forward our. demonstration. We do not trust, in mere hearsay, but are forced to believe ^thqse who prophesied before [the events] happened, because we actually see things that have happened and arc happening as was predicted" (ApoL 1.30). Daniel was the .quintessential prophet because, as Josephus, the Jewish historian, observed^ he "not only prophesied ;of future events but also determined the time of their fulfillment" (AJ 10.267). Hence Christians turned to Daniel to support their claim that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, and it is noteworthy that .the first ifull-length verseby-verse exposition of a book from the Jewish Bible was written early in the third century by Hippolytus, a^ Greek-speaking theologian living in Rome. In this commentary Hippolytus argued, on the basis of chronographical considerations, that the predictions in Daniel about the Messiah fitted exactly the time Jesus was born. , In the third century a number of 'Christian thinkers had begun to study history and chronology-in the tippe of answering pagan critics. Their efforts eventually led to a Christian scheme for world history. .The same Hippolytus wrote a chronicle of world history, an account of the major historical events from the beginning of time to the present, and he had been preceded by Julius Africanus, whose Chronogmphiai (Chronicles) was a history of the world to 217 C.E. in five books. Africanus's work was known arid used by Origen as well as by Porphyry. Eusebius consulted it in writing his Chronicle.,which began

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with Abraham's birth (2016/15 B.C.E.) and ended in 303 C.E. Eusebius wished to show that Christianity was the .legitimate continuation of the Jewish tradition. Of all these works the chronology in the Book of Daniel, and particularly his prophecy of the birth of Christ, was an integral part. Porphyry was no stranger to the science of chronology. Sometime around 270 C.E. he came to know the work of Callinicus, who had written a history of the Ptolemies, the Hellenistic rulers of Egypt between the time of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C.E. and the Romans in the first century B.C.E. Using the work of Callinicus and others, Porphyry prepared his own chronicle of world history, beginning with the fall of Troy and ending with the emperor Claudius, who ruled 268-70 c.E..10 Armed with these skills as well as the literary techniques learned from Longinus, Porphyry turned his attention to the Book of Daniel. In the traditional view of Christians and Jews, the Book of Daniel was thought to be written in the sixth century B.C.E. and to refer prophetically to later events—for example, the kingdoms of Persia and Greece, and the persecution of Jews under Antiochus IV (175-64 B.C.E.), king of the Seleucid Empire. Porphyry, on the other hand, came to the conclusion that Daniel was written in the second century B.C.E. to encourage Jewish perseverance in the face of Antiochus's repressive rule. Jerome summarizes his opinion in the prologue to his commentary on Daniel. Porphyry wrote his twelfth book against the prophecy of Daniel, denying that it was composed by the person to whom it is ascribed in its title, but rather by some individual living in Judaea at the time of Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes. He furthermore alleged that Daniel did not foretell the nature so much as he related the past, and lastly that whatever he spoke of up till the time of Antiochus contained authentic history, whereas anything 10. Recently doubts have been raised as to whether Porphyry actually wrote a Chronicle. His chronological studies may have been undertaken in connection with his work Against the Christians,, and perhaps later in his life. See Brian Croke, "Porphyry's AntiChristian Chronology," Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983): 168-85.

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he may have conjectured beyond that point was false, inasmuch as he would not have foreknown the future. Porphyry undermined the whole structure of historical interpretation that Christians had constructed on the basis of Daniel. If Porphyry was correct, the apologetic value of the prophecies of Christ's birth was destroyed and the claim that Daniel had predicted the final destruction of the Jewish Temple—another weapon in the Christian armory—was invalidated. Porphyry was too much of a scholar to be content simply with the general argument that Daniel was written four hundred years later than had been supposed. He went through the book section by section demonstrating, on the basis of a detailed analysis of the text, that a historical, as distinct from a prophetical, interpretation was the only one consistent with the statements of the book itself. In his view the book outlined in detail, from the perspective of one who had lived through the period, the actual course of events under the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes in the first half of the second century. That the Book of Daniel (or at least part of the book) described events under Antiochus was not a matter of dispute between Christians and Porphyry. The issue was whether the author spoke as a prophet (from the perspective of the sixth century) or whether he was writing history. "Because Porphyry saw that all these things had been fulfilled and could not deny that they had taken place, he overcame this evidence of historical accuracy by taking refuge in this evasion, contending that whatever is foretold concerning Antichrist at the end of the world was actually fulfilled in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, because of certain similarities to things which took place at this time" (Jerome, prologue, Comm. inDanielem). But the issue was not simply whether Daniel spoke prophetically or historically. Even if the Christian view .that Daniel prophesied future events was accepted, there was a further difficulty. Christians took the prophet to be referring to two different sets of events, those things which happened in the second century B.C.E. during the reign of Antiochus, and those which took place at the time of Christ. Com-

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meriting on Daniel 11 : 20ff., 'Then shall arise in his place one who shall send an exactor of tribute through the glory of the kingdom," Jerome writes: "Up to this point the historical order has been followed, and there has been no point of controversy between Porphyry and us. But the rest of the text from here on to the end of the book he interprets as applying to the person of Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes, the brother of Seleucus and the son of Antiochus the Great" (Comm. in Dan. 11.24). Porphyry claimed that the entire book was historical and was forced to interpret the later chapters in the same way. On this point, the character of the later chapters, Jerome had the better of the argument, because from chapter 11 to the end Daniel does actually prophesy (according to modern scholars) about the end of history. On the central point, however, whether the first part of the book was historical or prophetical, Porphyry had the stronger case. He was able to show that the author, on the basis of firsthand experience, described contemporary, not future, events. One section of the Book of Daniel that played an important role in Christian apologetics was curiously—indeed suspiciously—absent from Jerome's commentary. I am referring to the famous section in chapter 9 which was thought to prophesy the permanent destruction of the second Jewish Temple in 70 c.E. "There will be an abomination of desolation in the holy place until the end of time" (Dan. 9 : 27 [LXX]). In his discussion of Daniel 9 : 24-27, Jerome reports in detail on the views of earlier commentators such as Apollinarius of Laodicea, Eusebius, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, but he says nothing about Porphyry. The omission is particularly striking, because in his commentary on Matthew (24 : 16fF.), where this passage from Daniel is cited, Jerome says that Porphyry discussed this verse from Daniel in detail (Comm. in Matt. 24 : 16). Furthermore, the passage from Daniel, as well as the prophecy of Jesus in Matthew 24 : 1—2, had long become familiar apologetic topics in Christian writings. Daniel and Matthew were interpreted together to mean that the Jewish Temple which had been destroyed in 70 c.E. would never again be rebuilt, and "sacrifice and offering will cease until the consummation of the age," as Jerome puts it (Comm. in Dan.

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9.24-27). The end of sacrifices in Jerusalem was taken to mean that the Jewish religion had lost its legitimacy. It is surprising, especially in light of Jerome's observation in his commentary on Matthew 24, that Porphyry would have overlooked this opportunity to show the falsity of the Christian view of Daniel 9. Jerome, however, avoids any mention of Porphyry in his discussion of Daniel 9, even though he cites many Christian commentators on the passage. It is possible that Jerome deliberately suppressed this section of Porphyry's work. This would be * quite understandable, because chapter 9 of Daniel as well as Jesus' prophecy about the temple had become matters for heated debate late in the fourth century, after the emperor Julian's effort to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, thus restoring sacrificial worship to Jerusalem.11 Jerome's Commentary on Daniel was written early in the fifth century. Porphyry's criticism of the Old Testament was not limited to the Book of Daniel. I have already, mentioned his discussion of the date of Moses. Unfortunately, what else he had to say is lost or;has become part of a common stock of criticism of the Old Testament. Augustine, for example, said that pagans made fun of the story of Jonah and the whale. But Augustine, who thought such criticism puerile, was unwilling to attribute it to Porphyry, for whom he had high respect. Yet there is no reason to think that the comment could not have come from Porphyry. Augustine reports the objection as follows: ccWhat are we supposed to think about Jonah who is said to have been in the belly of a whale for three days? It is improbable and incredible that a man should have been-swallowed up with his clothing on in the; inside of a fish; or if this is meant figuratively, you ought to have the courtesy of explaining it. Further, what does it mean that after Jonah had been vomited up, a gourd vine had sprung.up over him:1 What reason was there for it to spring up>" (Ep"; 102 adDeogmtiam). Porphyry also seems to have made run of the Book of Hosea, for in it God commanded the prophet to marry a whore and have children by her (Jerome Comm. in Osee 1.2). 11. Robert L! Wilken, "The Jews and Christian Apologetics after Theodosius I Cunaos Populas," Harvard Theological Review 73 '(1980): 451-71.

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THE CHRISTIAN NEW TESTAMENT Porphyry's Against the Christians must have included a major section on the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament, We are, however, poorly informed about this aspect of Porphyry's criticism, because Christian writers who do report pagan criticism of the New Testament seldom mention Porphyry as their source. It has been assumed, as mentioned above, that the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, a fourth-century Christian apologist, was based on material drawn from Porphyry's work, but there is no way one can be certain of this. There is, however, another Christian writing on the New Testament that does use Porphyry. This is Augustine's On the Harmony of the Gospels (De consensu Evangelistarum). When this work is compared with the few presumably genuine fragments we do possess (not from Macarius), we can gain at least a general impression of Porphyry's approach to the New Testament. On the Harmony of the Gospels was divided into four main sections. The first deals with the charge that the disciples invented the portrait of Christ presented in the Gospels. According to Augustine, some pagan critics had argued that Christ was a wise man, not a divine being as the writers of the New Testament claimed, and that he, like other sages, taught men and women to worship the one high God. His disciples, however, had made Christ into an object of worship, thereby detracting from the honor due to the one supreme God. The second and third sections of the book discussed disagreements and contradictions between the four Gospels, particularly those passages in Matthew which have parallels in Mark, Luke, and John. In the fourth section Augustine discussed texts from the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John that have no parallels in Matthew. Augustine had written the book because certain persons assailed the writers of the Gospels "with calumnies" and called into question "the veracity of their account" (De consensu Evangelistarum 1.10). Chief among their objections was that the Evangelists were "not in harmony with each other." Augustine wished to show that the writers of the Gospels based their view of Christ "on the most reliable information

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and the most trustworthy testimonies" (De cons. 1.1). In his view, two of the Evangelists, Matthew and John, were eyewitnesses and the other two, Mark and Luke, received their information through the "trustworthy" accounts of the former. In the first section of the book On the Harmony of the Gospels, Augustine mentions Porphyry several times and intimates that he was the source of this type of criticism of the Gospels. One of the reasons, says Augustine, that pagan critics subjected the Gospels to examination was to show that the disciples had fabricated the stories about Jesus and claimed more for their master than he really was; so much more indeed that they even called him the son of God, and the word of God, by whom all things were made, and affirmed that he and God are one. And in the same way they [pagan critics] dispose of all other kindred passages in the epistles of the apostles, in the light of which we have been taught that he is to be worshipped as one God with the Father. For they are of the opinion that he is certainly to be honored as the wisest of men; but they deny that he is to be worshipped as God. [De cons, 1.11] These comments seem to describe Porphyry. Much of the On the Harmony of the Gospels is concerned with obvious discrepancies therein. Augustine discusses the apparent contradictions between the genealogical list given in Matthew and the one given in Luke, the discrepancy in the account of Christ's infancy in these same two Gospels, the variants in the account of the baptism of Jesus (only Matthew records a conversation between Jesus and John the Baptizer), the differences in the various accounts of the Last Supper, the fact that Matthew (27 : 3-10) cites a passäge from Jeremiah which actually comes from the Book of Zechariah, the discrepancy in the accounts of Jesus' death (whether he died at the third or the sixth hour), the various statements made by Jesus on the cross, and many others. It is doubtful that everything to be found in Augustine's Harmony of the Gospels was drawn from Porphyry's work Against the Christians-,

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but the general approach is similar to what we learn about Porphyry ^from other writers. Jerome said, for example, that Porphyry (along with Celsus and Julian) had charged the Evangelists with falsity (Jerome,: £p. 57 ad Pammach.9). In another passage Jerome reports that Porphyry thought the,.disciples were inexperienced in dealing with historical questions and were even ignorant of the Jewish Scriptures. Porphyry observed that the Gospel of Mark cited a verse from Malachi and assigned it to Isaiah (Mark 1 : 2; Frag. 9). In another place (Matt. 13 : 35)£ Porphyry pointed out that Matthew attributes to Isaiah a passage which in fact came from Psalm 77 (Frag. 10). Elsewhere he criticized the genealogy; in Matthew and the discrepancies between the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke (frag. 11). Even though this type of literary and historical criticism must have comprised a large part of Porphyry's analysis of the Christian Scriptures, it seems likely that he also dealt with other types of contradictions and inconsistencies, and that he may even have discussed the behavior and character of Jesus' disciples. Porphyry noticed passages in the New Testament that described strife between the disciples or in which they appear foolish. One example is the conflict between Paul and Peter presentecl in the opening chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians. When Paul and Peter clashed over the matter of circumcision, Paul, according to his own word, "opposed Peter to his face." Porphyry takes this incident to prove that Peter was in error (Frag. 21b), and this supported the view that the Apostles, to whom awesome authority was attributed by Christians, were not reliable men. This incident also showed Paul's "impudence" in claiming that he had received a special revelation from the Lord (Gal. 1 : 16), boasting that he did not have to confer with "flesh and blood" to learn what .he should teach. All of which goes to show, according to Porphyry, that the dis.ciples were not united in their teaching and that from the beginning there was strife and division within the church. This scene of conflict between Paul and Peter must have troubled Christians considerably, as Jerome discussed it at length and in ä number of different places. Ño doubt, in. Porphyry's book there was much more of this kind of criticism.as well.as exposure of contradictions within the writings of

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Paul, but· unfortunately-..there is little else that we can attribute to Porphyry with confidence. The Apocriticus of Marcarais Magnes enumerates many other criticisms, especially of Paul, whose choleric outbursts and paradoxical language, inconsistency, and irrationality were offensive to ä man like Porphyry, but there: is no way we can say with certainty that these criticisms originated with him. It is clear, however;, on the basis of the meager information we do have concerning Porphyry's attack on Christianity, that the Christian and Jewish Scriptures were of special interest to him and that he was particularly adept at offering literary and historical criticism of,the Bible. As we saw; in an earlier chapter, Celsus also criticized the biblical text, but he cud not know the Scriptures as well nor was he as skillful a literary critic as Porphyry% Porphyry also had the benefit of Qrigen's exegesis, which helped him to see where the problems lay. It is, I think, important for understanding pagan criticism of Christianity .in antiquity, as well as the development of Christian apologetics, to emphasize that historical and literary criticism of the Scriptures played a part in the conflict between Hellenism ,and Christianity.12 The central issue, as stated by Porphyry and reiterated by Augustine in his defense of the Scriptures, was whether the Gospels provided a reiiable account of the history of; Jesusy Pagan critics realized that the Christian claims about Jesus could not be based simply on the unexamined statements of Christians, whether these statements be from the first disciples or from those who at a later time simply imputed authority to the earliest texts. If Christians were to make claims about the person and work of Jesus, they could not be. based on faith or on the community's own memory, and self-understanding; they had to be substantiated by an appeal to the same criteria used in establishing any ; document as reliable or any event as «historical. The question of faith and historyvso rriuch a part of modern theological discourse since the Enlightenment, was also a significant part of the debate between pagans arid Christians in the ancient world. 12, On the importance of the historical argument in Porphyry's criticism of Christianity, see V. den Boer, "A Pagan Historian and His Enemies: Porphyry against the Christians," Classical Philology 69 (1974): 198-208.

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PHILOSOPHY FROM ORACLES If all that was known of Porphyry's attack on Christianity were what we have discussed thus far, it would be hard to imagine why his work was so feared by Christians. This is precisely the conclusion to which a recent writer on Porphyry's Against the Christians has come. ccThat its burning should have been thought necessary as late as 448 is sufficient evidence of its power to move men's minds. Yet when we look at the undoubtedly genuine fragments it is difficult to see why such a fear existed if they are indeed characteristic of the whole."13 There was, however, more to Porphyry's interpretation of the Christian movement than what is provided by the few fragments remaining from Against the Christians. Porphyry was feared because he also wrote another book, the Philosophy from Oracles, and this work sets forth more fundamental criticism of Christianity. In it Porphyry provided a sympathetic account and a defense of the traditional religions of the Greco-Roman world, and he sought to make a place within this scheme for the new religion founded by Jesus of Nazareth. Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles was a book about the worship of the gods. To appreciate his approach, however, it is necessary to say a few things about how men and women of this time conceived of the gods, and how they understood the relation between the many gods and the one supreme God who ruled over all. We are inclined to think of God as one, single and solitary, and to conceive of the category of divinity as having only one member, the one God. To the ancients, however, there were many different forms of divinity, and, as observed in the previous chapter, sophisticated thinkers such as Porphyry or Celsus believed that though there was one supreme God this did not prevent people from believing in other lesser gods. The term divine designated a category of being stretching from the one high God down through the Olympian gods, the visible gods (e.g., the stars), the daimones, and finally to heroes or deified men. The supreme God presided over a company of gods. 13. Meredith, 1136.

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Each type of god required a different form of worship. To the one supreme God only spiritual worship of the mind and heart was thought appropriate, whereas to other gods it was proper to bring sacrifices. Long ago, said Porphyry, men "consecrated temples, shrines and altars to the.Olympian gods, to terrestrial deities and heroes sacrificial hearths, and to the gods of the underworld ritual pits and trenches . . . and to the cosmos they dedicated caves and grottoes" (De Antro Nympharum 6). In his work On Abstinence from Animal Food, in which Porphyry defends vegetarianism, he outlines the different types of worship suitable to the various deities. CiThe first God is incorporeal, immoveable, and invisible and is in need of nothing external to himself." Hence, to this god "who is above all things, one sacrifices neither with incense, nor dedicates anything sensible to him. . . . Neither is vocal language nor internal speech adapted to the highest god . . . but we should venerate him in profound silence with a pure soul, and with pure conceptions about him" (Abst. 2.37, 34). To his "progeny," however, "hymns, recited orally, are to be offered." To other gods, like the stars, sacrifices of inanimate objects are fitting, whereas to lower gods, religious observances and other sacrifices should be offered. The daimones, for example, love the smell of burning flesh (Abst. 2.42). The various categories of the divine are not firmly fixed. It is possible for certain deities to ascend or descend in the hierarchy of divinity. This can be seen particularly in the case of heroes, for heroes were once outstanding men who in the course of time were elevated to divine status because of the character of their lives or the wondrous works they performed. In the chapter on Celsus, I cited a passage from Plutarch that illustrates this point, and it may be helpful to cite it again. He says that some heroes are borne upward, "from men into heroes and from heroes into daimones. . . . But from the daimones a few souls still, in the long reach of time, because of supreme excellence, come, after being purified, to share completely in divine qualities" (De def. or. 415c). Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles differed from his other theological works in that it drew upon oracles which had been handed down

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among the Greeks and other ancient peoples. Instead of simply providing philosophical reasons for his beliefs, he sought to root his views in traditional (and authoritative) texts. ; Sure, then, and steadfast is he who draws his hopes of salvation from this" as from the only sure source, and to such you will impart information without any reserve. For I myself call the gods to witness, that I have neither added anything, nor taken away from the sense of the oracles, except where I have corrected an erroneous phrase, or made a change for greater clarity, or completed the metre when defective, or struck out anything that did not fit the purpose; so that I preserved the sense of what was spoken untouched, guarding against the impiety of such changes, rather than against the avenging justice that follows from sacrilege. And our present collection will contain a record of many philosophical doctrines according as the gods through oracles declared the truth to be."14 By drawing on oracles Porphyry sought to establish a link between the religious beliefs of philosophers and the beliefs of the men and women in the street who did not philosophize about the gods but worshipped them at home or participated in public rites. The Philosophy, from Oracles contained three books, and its outline, as it can be constructed from the fragments, conforms to the general theological outlook sketched above. The first book dealt with the worship of the gods in the proper sense of the term: the one high God, the Olympian deities (Hera, Apollo, Hermes, Poseidon, Artemis), the stars and heavenly beings (the visible gods); and it discussed the various forms in which these deities appeared, what sacrifices were appropriate to them, and the meaning of piety toward them. The second book dealt with the daimones, who also received their own forms of religious observance and honor. Book 3 dealt with heroes or divine men—for example, figures such as Heracles, the оювсцп, Orpheus, 14. Fragments of Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles, ed. G, Wolff, Porphyrii de philosophia, ex oraculis haurienda (Berlin, 1856), 42—43. This passage is taken from Eusebius, Prciep. Evcwiß. 4.5.

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Pythagoras, and so on. Porphyry placed Jesus in book 3 among the heroes, as a human being, a sage who had been elevated to divinity after his death. To understand the significance of Porphyry's treatment of Jesus it may be helpful to outline briefly the intellectual tradition within Christianity to which he was responding. For over a century, since the time when the Apologists first began to offer a reasoned and philosophical presentation of Christianity to pagan intellectuals, Christian thinkers had claimed that they worshipped the same God honored by the Greeks and Romans, in other words, the deity adored by other reasonable men and women. Indeed, Christians adopted precisely the same language to describe God as did pagan intellectuals. The Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch described God as "ineffable . . . inexpressible . . . цпсотатаЫе . . . incomprehensible . . . inconceivable . . . incomparable . . . unteachable . . . immutable . . . inexpressible . . . without beginning because he was uncreated, immutable because he is immortal" (AdAutol. 1.3-4). This view, that God was an immaterial, timeless, and impassible divine being, who is known through the mind alone, became a keystone of Christian apologetics, for it served to establish a decisive link to the Greek spiritual and intellectual tradition. As late as the fifth century, in Augustine's City of God and Theodoret of Cyrus's apology, The Curing of Greek Maladies, apologists continued to argue that Christians and pagans worshipped the same supreme being. Porphyry's strategy was to sever the link between Christianity and Hellenism by showing that Christians had abandoned worship of this God in favor of the worship of Christ. The nucleus of his argument can be deduced from a series of citations in Augustine's City of God, Throughout the work Augustine defends the worship of the one true God, and in book 19 he cites Porphyry in his support. In answer to the question, who is the God you worship, Augustine says: the god we worship "is the God whom Porphyry, the most learned of philosophers, although the fiercest enemy of the Christians, acknowledges to be a great God, even on the evidence of the oracles of those whom he supposes to be gods. For Porphyry produced a book entitled Philosophy from Oracles, a description

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and compilation of responses [i.e., oracles], ostensibly divine, on matters of philosophical interest" (Civ. Dei 19.22-23). Augustine .then goes on to" cite several oracles from the Philosophy from Oracles in which the Jews are praised for their belief in the one God and the Christians are denigrated. As an example of such an oracle, Augustine mentions one quoted by Porphyry from Apollo: "In God, the begetter and the king before all things, at whom heaven trembles, and earth and sea and the hidden depths of the underworld arid the very divinities shudder in dread; their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews: greatly honor." : Then Augustine cites another section from the Philosophy from Oracles in which Porphyry praises Jesus: "What I am going to say [says Porphyry] may certainly appear startling to some. I mean the fact that the gods have pronounced Christ to have been extremely devout, and have said that he has become immortal, and that they mention him in terms of commendation; whereas the Christians, by their account, are polluted and contaminated and entangled in error; and there are many other such slanders they issue against them." As confirmation^ Porphyry cites an oracle of Hecate: "To those who asked whether Christ was God, Hecate replied, Tou know that the immortal soul goes on its way after it leaves the body; whereas when it is cut off from wisdom it wanders forever. That soul belongs to a man of outstanding piety [i.e., Jesus]; this they worship because truth is a stranger to them,3:" The point of these admittedly somewhat obscure oracles was that genuinely religious men and women worshipped the one high God, the "great God," who is above all, the beginning and source of all things, an immaterial and changeless being, and that Jesus belonged among the devout men and women who worshipped this one God. Porphyry cites one oracle from Hecate that described Jesus as a "very pious man" and another which said: "The wise men of the Hebrews (and.this Jesus was also one of them, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo, quoted above) warned religious men against these evil demons and lesser spirits, and forbade them to pay attention to them, telling their·* hearers rather to-venerate the gods of heaven, but above

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all to worship God the Father. But this is what the gods also teach; and we have shown above how they advise us to turn our thoughts to God, and everywhere bid us worship him , , ," (Civ. Dei 19.23). To summarize Porphyry's argument: There is one God whom all men worship, and Jesus, like other pious men, worshipped this God and taught others to venerate him. By his teaching Jesus directed men's attention to the one God, but his disciples fell into error and taught men to worship Jesus. "Thus Hecate said that he (Jesus) was a most devout man,, and that his soul, like the souls of the other devout men, was endowed after death with the immortality it deserved; and that Christians in their ignorance worship this soul" (Civ. Dei 19.23). Earlier in this chapter I discussed Augustine's work On the Harmony of the Gospels as a source for Porphyry's criticism of the Gospels. This same work also includes material from Porphyry dealing with Jesus and the worship of the one God. Some pagans, said Augustine, criticize Jesus because he wrote no books and spread his fame abroad by the use of magic. Others, however, attribute "superior wisdom" (sapientia) to Jesus, but "only as a man." they say that his disciples were responsible for teaching people that he was the son of God and promulgating the idea that he was theOne through whom all things are made (John 1:1). These critics of Christianity believe that Jesus should be "honored as a very wise man, but they deny that he should be worshipped as God" (De cons. 1.7.11), Why pagans should honor Christ can be seen from some of t their philosophers—for example, Porphyry—who "consulted their gods to discover what they should respond about Christ and were compelled by their own oracles to ' praise him" (De cons. 1.15.23). These same pagan philosophers, continues Augustine, criticize the disciples of Jesus because, in/abandoning the teaching of Jesus, they apostasized from the traditional worship and advocated the "destruction of temples, the ceasing of animal sacrifice, and the shattering of idols." Jesus cannot be blamed for the refusal of Christians to worship the gods,, for the disciples "taught something different from what he taught" (De cons. 1.16.24). They began a revolutionary movement whose teaching was contrary to what they had learned from Christ,

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and Christianity as it has been known and practiced since then is not the religion inaugurated by Jesus but a new system of beliefs initiated by his disciples. The new religion focuses on Jesus, whereas the religion of Jesus centered on the supreme God of all. Porphyry's criticism has a curiously modern ring to it. On the basis of Augustine's writings, Porphyry's discussion of Christianity in the Philosophy from Oracles included the following: (1) praise for Jesus as a good and pious man who ranks among the other sages or divine men, for example, Pythagoras or Heracles, venerated by the Greeks and Romans; (2) criticism of the disciples, and of those who follow their teaching, because they misrepresented Jesus and inaugurated a new form of worship; (3) defense of the worship of the one high God; (4) praise of the Jews for worshipping this one God. Besides Augustine, two other Latin apologists, Arnobius and Lactantius, both of whom wrote early in the fourth century (i.e., shortly after Porphyry), give us further information about Porphyry's treatment of Christianity in the Philosophy from Oracles. In his Adversus Nationes written in 311 C.E., Arnobius says that he is at a loss to explain why the pagans attack and the gods are hostile to the Christians. ccWe have," he writes, "one common religion with you and join with you in worshipping the one true God. To which the pagans reply: 'The gods are hostile to you because you maintain that a man, born of a human being . . . was God and you believe that he still exists and you worship him in daily prayers'" (Adv. Nat. 1.36). Arnobius does not mention Porphyry by name but his Adversus Nationes certainly had Porphyry in mind,15 and the views he attacks are precisely the same as those outlined by Augustine, Christians are presented as worshipping the same God as the pagans; where they differ is in their view of Jesus. This worship, which marks Christian belief and practice, has led Christians to abandon the traditional worship. "You [i.e., Porphyry] charge us with turning away from the religion of earlier times" (Adv. Nat. 2.67). 15. Ernest Fortin, "The Viri Novi of Arnobius," in The Heritage of the Early Church', Orientalia Christiana Analecta, no. 195 (Rome, 1973), 197-226.

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The other Latin apologist, Lactantius, who wrote approximately ten years before Arnobius, also seems to have had the Philosophy from Oracles in mind when he wrote his Divine Institutions in 303 c.E. Lactantius, as was observed earlier, mentions a "priest of philosophy" who was living in the capital and who wrote a work in three books against the Christians. In Divine Institutions ^ Lactantius cited part of the same oracle of Apollo quoted by Augustine in the City of God. This oracle, says Lactantius, speaks the truth when it praises Jesus for his wisdom and his wondrous works, but it errs in "denying that he was God." For if "Jesus is wise, then his system of instruction is wise and they are wise who follow it," why are we considered "foolish, visionary, senseless, who follow a master who is wise even by the confession of the gods themselves" (Div. Inst. 4.13)? Pagans "cast in our teeth" the suffering of Jesus because they say we ccworship a man and one who was visited and tormented with remarkable punishment" (Div. Inst. 4.16). Without mentioning Porphyry by name, Lactantius seems to be summarizing the main arguments of his Philosophy from Oracles. The same motifs appear here as in Augustine: praise for Jesus as a wise man and criticism of his followers for their folly in worshipping him as God. Eusebius the church historian, also writing at the beginning of the fourth century shortly after Porphyry's death, had also studied the Philosophy from Oracles carefully. In his Evangelical Preparation^ a massive apology for Christianity, he cited Porphyry's writings in almost one hundred places. The only author to be quoted more often than Porphyry is Plato. One of the chief purposes of the Evangelical Preparation. was to prove to pagan critics of Christianity that the revolt of Christianity ("our revolt" says Eusebius) from the traditional religion is "reasonable" (book 2, preface). In a long passage in the first book of the Evangelical Preparation^ Eusebius summarized the argument against the Christians, and this passage has been thought to derive from Porphyry, who is not named but is identified as "one of the Greeks." Porphyry, according to Eusebius's summary, wrote:

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How can men not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostasized from the customs of our fathers, through which every nation and city is sustained? What good, can reasonably be hoped for from those who stand as enemies and warriors against their benefactors? What else are they than fighters against God? What types of pardon will they be worthy of who have turned away from those recognized as Gods from the earliest times among all Greeks and Barbarians, both in cities and in the country, with all types of sacrifices, and mysteries and initiations by all, kings and lawgivers and philosophers, and have rather chosen what is impious and atheistic among men . . . ? They have not adhered to the God who is honored among the Jews . . . but cut out for themselves a new way. . . . [Praep, Evany. 1.2.1—4] Though the argument of this passage is similar to what was reported by Augustine and the Latin apologists, the emphasis on apostasy from the traditional religion is more pronounced. It is clear from this passage how Porphyry's writings could have been used as a religious defense of persecution, for this fragment states the case against Christianity in terms of the public piety that was necessary to sustain the cities of the empire. In a more sophisticated form, Porphyry has restated the same arguments that were implicit in ¿he early second century, when Christianity was called a superstition. " THE RELIGION OF THE EMPEROR Porphyry's wordis here about Christianity are not simply the idle musings of a solitary philosopher. Similar attitudes were shared by imperial officials, as can be seen in several official documents from the reign of Maximin Daia (310-13 c.E;), one of the last persecutors of the Christians. Of all the Roman emperors who persecuted them, Maximin was the most self-consciously religious.16 AH we know of his life 16. Robert M. Grant, "The Religion of Emperor Maximin Daia," in Jacob Neusner, ed., Christianity and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Leiden, 1974), 4:143-66.

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and brief reign indicates that he took seriously the public piety of the Roman Empire. We are fortunate to possess a copy of a petition addressed to the emperor by a number of cities in Asia Minor, as well as Maximin's response to one sent by the city of Tyre. Both the petition and the response reflect Maximin's views, as it seems likely that the petitions were initiated by the emperor. The petition from Lycia and Pamphylia (provinces in southwestern Asia Minor) was discovered on a marble stele in 1892 in the village of Aruf (ancient Arykanda in Lycia) and can be seen today in the National Museum in Istanbul. It reads in part: To the masters of every nation and people, the emperors and Caesars Galerius Valerius Maximinus and Valerius Licinianus Licnius, from the nation of the Lycians and Pamphylians, a petition and supplication. Since the gods your kinsmen have demonstrated to all their love of mankind, oh most divine kings, who are concerned with worship of them on behalf of the eternal security of yourselves, we considered it would be well to take refuge with your eternal majesty and make petition that the Christians, long suffering from madness, and even now maintaining the same disease, should at length be made to cease and not give offense by some ill-omened new cult to the worship due to the gods. In his response to this petition the emperor acknowledged that the world is "governed and kept secure by the benevolent providence of the immortal gods," and he thanked the city for its petition, which shows what sort of "devotion and piety (theosebeia) you displayed toward the immortal gods." He described Christians as those who "persist in that accursed folly" and encouraged the citizens to worship "Jupiter the best and greatest, the guardian of your most glorious city." Those who persist in the folly of shunning the traditional worship are to be "driven from your city . . . so that it may be purged of all contamination and impiety (asebeia) and in pursuit of its set purpose may with due reverence give itself to the regular worship of the immortal

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gods." Maximin .concludes by expressing once again his wish that the citizens of Tyre continue to display evidence of their "piety towards the immortal gods" (Eusebius, Hist. EccL 9.7.3-15). The language of his rescript is remarkably close to the sentiments expressed in Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles. By the beginning of the fourth century, the official response to Christianity on the part of the emperor and the attitudes of some intellectuals were similar. Christianity had now become a powerful force within the life of the empire. Its numbers had increased significantly and its leaders were well-educated and influential. Yet Christians, in thought if not always in action, remained a people apart. They contributed little to the public life of society and by their fixation on Jesus undermined the religious foundations of the cities in which they lived. Porphyry issued his great challenge to the Christians just as the emperors were seeking one more time to halt the advance of the Christian movement through persecution. The issue between pagans and Christians centered on what Eusebius called "political theology55 —that is, the religious and theological beliefs that are integral to the life of a people or a city. Pagans bring this charge against us, writes Eusebius, that we do not honor the divinities of the cities and we are thought guilty of "the greatest impiety in taking no account of such manifest and beneficent powers, but rather openly break the laws, which require that each venerate the ancestral customs and not disturb what is inviolable, and do not follow in the footsteps of the piety (eusebeia) of the forefathers and are meddlesome through a love of innovation." Our opponents, concludes Eusebius, believe that punishment by death is a fitting penalty for such transgression of the laws (Praep. Evany. 4Л.З). Although Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles was a philosophical treatise in defense of the traditional religion, it may well have had a subsidiary purpose in providing a rationale for the persecution of Christians; for it revived the ancient charge that Christians, in forming a new religion devoted to the worship of Jesus, not only turned men away from the worship of the one supreme God, whose worship Christians claimed to share with others, but also undercut traditional

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piety. The emperors who were responsible for overseeing and protecting the.traditional worship,.and the philosopher Porphyry who assumed the intellectual task of defending this religion, acted in concert. Porphyry became the theoretician for the ideas implicit in the actions of Roman officials beginning with Pliny early in the second century.

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Before concluding this section on Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles a final point needs discussion. As we saw in the previous chapter, one of the charges brought against Jesus was that he was a magician, and that he accomplished his wonders by the use of magical arts. This charge . was still alive among pagans at the time * Porphyry was writing. Eusebius, for example, wrote a little treatise against á certain Hierocles who had written a book comparing Jesus with Apollonius of Туana, a popular, wonder-worker, sage, and healer who was revered by many Greeks. Hierocles argued that Apollonius had been a true wise man and philosopher whereas Jesus was a magician and sorcerer (Hierocl. 1-2). Arnobius also mentioned the charge that Jesus was a magician who made use of incantations, formulas, and other magical arts to perform his wondrous works '(Adv. Nat.a.43). Lactantius reported a similar charge (Div. Inst. 5.3), and it is .likely that he had Hierocles in mind. Porphyry, however, did not accuse Jesus of practicing magic. Instead he praised him as a "wise man5' and disassociated himself from ' such criticisms so that Jesus could be integrated into his portrait of the traditional religion. The Evangelical Demonstration, another long apologetic: work written by Eusebius at about the same time he was writing the Evangelical Preparation^ discussed the charge that Jesus was a magician. To defend Jesus .against this attack, Eusebius appealed to the "oracles of your [pagan] gods," and cited an oracle to show that Jesus was not a "sorcerer but pious and wise and has access to the heavens." What could be a more convincing testimony, he says, "than the writing of our enemy against us which he entitled Philosophy from

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Oracles where he says in the third book word for word: What I am about to say may seem surprising to some, namely that the gods have proclaimed Christ to be most pious and immortal, and that they remember him in a laudatory way5" (Demon. 3.6,39-3.7.1). This is the same passage cited by Augustine in the City of God and summarized by Lactantius in his Divine Institutes. By relying on Porphyry's positive appraisal of Jesus, Eusebius used Porphyry to criticize Hierocles, thus playing one pagan critic off against the other. Porphyry refuted those who say Jesus was a magician and sorcerer, for he showed, by appealing to oracles, that Jesus was "pious and most just and wise and an inhabitant of the vaults of the heavens." Christians feared Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles because it was the first work to give a positive appraisal of Jesus within the framework of pagan religion. Precisely at the time Porphyry was writing his book, Christian leaders were on the verge of a major dispute about the status of Christ. Shortly afterward, the Arian controversy exploded and Christian bishops became engaged in a far-reaching debate about whether Jesus was fully divine and equal to the one supreme God. It would be stretching the point to say that some of the Christian bishops would have agreed with Porphyry's view of Christ. But many of them, among whom was Eusebius of Caesarea, were very reluctant to consider Jesus as divine in the same sense that God the creator was divine. Indeed, the controversy, which was to divide the Christian world for several generations, centered precisely on that issue: Was Jesus to be thought of as fully God, equal to the one high God? Or was he a lesser deity, who, though sharing an intimate relation to God the Father, was nevertheless in the second rank? To place Jesus among the Greek heroes was, in the minds of the pagans, to give him a lofty place indeed, for this put him in a class with Heracles or Pythagoras. But to those Christians who were beginning to claim that Jesus was equal to the one high God, it was a stinging rebuttal. AN UNREASONING FAITH As I have indicated in the previous sections, I think that Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles sets forth his most important criticism of the

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Christian movement. Before concluding this chapter, however, a few words should be said about several of Porphyry's other points against Christianity, because they help us to see how thoroughly he had analyzed the new religion and also indicate that some of the criticisms offered earlier, chiefly by Celsus but also by Galen, continued to inform pagan critics. Some of these were to be repeated by Julian the Apostate several generations later. Like Galen and Celsus, Porphyry charged Christians with promulgating an "unreasoning faith" (Eusebius, Pmep. Evang. 1.3.1). In a recently uncovered fragment from Porphyry discovered in a work of Didymus the Blind, a fourth-century Christian exegete from Alexandria, Porphyry discussed the Christian doctrine that "all things are possible with God." Basing his comments on the passage in Job 10 : 13, £Ί know that you can do all things. Nothing is impossible for you," he objected, like Galen, to the idea that God is omnipotent. If God can do all things, then he can do things that are contrary to nature. If this is so, how can one claim to have a reasonable view of God? A number of other objections concern specific items of Christian teaching. He raises questions about the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Will the resurrection of all men and women be like the resurrection of Lazarus or the resurrection of Christ? asks Porphyry. "If it conforms to that of Christ how can the resurrection of the one who was born without any intervention of seed accord with that of the sons of his seed? And if it conforms to the resurrection of Lazarus, this does not seem appropriate, because the resurrection of Lazarus was accomplished with a body not yet corrupted, with that same body in which he was recognized as Lazarus, whereas our bodies will be raised after having been scattered for many centuries" (Frag. 92). Further, what will the resurrected body be like? If it is raised to a state of blessedness, impervious to suffering and not subject to hunger, why did Christ show his wounds and eat after his resurrection? Objections -such as these were taken quite seriously by Christians. Augustine wrote a long letter responding to the inquiries of a friend who was troubled by such questions (Ep. 102). Similar issues lie behind the later books of the CityofGod^ where Augustine discusses the resurrection of the dead and the life to come.

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Porphyry, also formulates anew a topic raised by Celsus—namely, the. difficulties of